Gregory Corso

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Gregory Nunzio Corso (March 26, 1930 – January 17, 2001) was an American poet, youngest of Beat Generation writers (with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs).

Early life

Born Nunzio Corso of New York City's St. Vincent's Hospital, Corso later selected "Gregory" as a confirmation name. He was "Nunzio" in Little Italy and its communities, though others were "Gregory." "Nunzio" is often used short for "Annunziato," the announcing angel Gabriel and therefore a poet. Corso discovered Hermes, not just Gabriel, but also the divine messenger.

Michelina Corso, born in Miglianico, Abruzzo, Italy, and migrated to the United States at the age of nine with her mother and four other sisters. Sam Corso, a first-generation Italian American who was also a teenager, gave birth to Nunzio Corso the same year. They lived in Bleecker and MacDougal, the heart of Greenwich Village and upper Little Italy, where they lived.

Corso's mother mysteriously abandoned him in his first year, leaving him at a Catholic Church Charities affiliate in New York. Sam "Fortunato" Corso, a clothing center employee, discovered the baby and put him in a foster home. Michelina came from Trenton, but Sam put her life in jeopardy, but Sam ended her life. One of Michelina's sisters was married to a New Jersey mobster who promised to give Michelina her "vengeance," implying that Sam would be killed. Michelina resisted and returned to Trenton without a child. Sam told Corso that his mother had returned to Italy and abandoned the family. He was also told that she was a prostitute and was "disgraziata" (disgraced) and led to Italian exile. "I should have flushed you down the toilet," Sam told the young boy several times. It was 67 years ago that Corso learned the truth about his mother's disappearance.

Corso spent the next 11 years in foster care in at least five different homes. His father was seldom seen again. Corso was often mocked: "I'd spill jello, and the foster home people would beat me if he did." My father would come to visit, and he'd beat me twice more—a double whammy." Corso, a foster child, was one of thousands of people aided by the Church during the Great Depression, with the intention of resurrecting families as the economy improved. Corso was an altar child and a gifted pupil. Gregory was sent by his father in 1941 to prevent the military draft. Despite this, Sam Corso was drafted and sent overseas.

Corso became a homeless teenager on Little Italy's streets before being alone. He slept in subways in the winter and then slept on rooftops in the summer. He continued to attend Catholic school, but did not warn authorities that he was homeless. He obtained breakfast bread from a bakery in Little Italy with permission. In exchange for operating errands, street food stall vendors will sell him food.

Corso was ordered to give a toaster to a neighbor at the age of 13. A passerby donated the toaster (roughly 94 dollars) while he was running the errand, and Corso sold it. He used the money to buy a tie and white shirt, and he wore it to The Song of Bernadette, a film about the virgin Mary's mystical appearance to Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes. The police apprehended him as he returned from the theater. Corso said he was looking for a miracle, specifically to locate his mother. "They were my only heroes" Corso had a lifelong obsession with saints and holy men. However, he was arrested and imprisoned in The Tombs, New York's notorious jail. Corso, who was only 13 years old, was seen next to an adult, criminally insane killer who had stabbed his wife repeatedly with a screwdriver. Corso was traumatized by the event. Neither Corso's stepmother nor his paternal grandmother would pay the $50 bond. He remained in the Tombs despite his own mother's absence and his inability to make bail.

A 14-year-old freezing Corso burst into his tutor's office for warmth in 1944 and collapsed asleep on a desk. For the second time with adults, he slept through the snow and was arrested for breaking and entering and entering the Tombs. He was taken to the Bellevue Hospital Center's psychiatric ward and later released.

Corso burst into a tailor shop and took an enormous suit from a date to dress for a date on the eve of his 18th birthday. According to police reports, he was arrested two blocks from the store two blocks away. He spent the night in the Tombs and was arraigned the next morning as an 18-year-old with prior convictions. He was sentenced to Clinton State Prison in Dannemora, New York, from two to three years in no longer a "new criminal." It was New York's toughest jail, and it was the seat of the state's electric chair. Corso has often expressed admiration for the fact that Clinton made him a writer.

"The angels of Clinton Prison, who died in my seventeenth year as a child, gave me, books of illumination," Gasoline's second book of poetry. Later, Clinton became known as the "poets' jail," as rap poets have served time in New York ("1991").

Conceived a tale of why he was sent to Clinton, Corso, who was afraid of prison and the possibility of rape. He told hardened Clinton prisoners that he and two others had devised the wild idea of taking over New York City by means of walkie-talkies, enforcing a sequence of improvable and complicated robberies. Both of the three boys took up a designated position, one inside the store to be robbed, one outside to look for the police, and the third, Corso, the master-planner, in a tiny room nearby dictating the orders. Corso said he was in the tiny room giving the orders when the police arrived. Corso's youthfulness, his enthralling yarn at Clinton attracted his bemused curiosity. Richard Biello, a capo, asked Corso who he was associated with, knowing that he was not from New York to face such violent crimes as walkie-talkie robberies.

"I'm independent!"

Corso fired back, trying to avoid being surrounded by the gang of prisoners. Corso was grabbed by a handful of prisoners a week later, and the 18-year-old was likely to be arrested. "Corso!" Biello exclaimed as he stepped in. Right now, you don't appear to be so independent." Biello waved off the would-be rapists who were afraid of mafia reprisals.

Corso thus came under the custody of a slew of elite Mafioso prisoners and became something of a mascot because he was the youngest prisoner in the jail and was entertained. In the "courts," 55-gallon-barl barbecues and picnic tables have been assigned to the influential prisoners, Corso will cook the steaks and veal brought from the outside by mafia underlings. Clinton had a ski run right in the middle of "the yards," and Corso learned to downhill ski and taught the mafiosi. He entertained his mobster elders as a court jester, who was quick with ripostes and chuckles. "1) Don't serve time, let time serve you," Corso would often quote from the three mafia capo's: "1) Don't work time, let time serve you." 2) You should not take your shoes off because you will be walking right out of here with a two-to-three ratio. 3) See four guys in the yard talking to three guys. See yourself. "Intui yourself." Just months before being vacated by Charles "Lucky" Luciano, Corso was imprisoned in the very cell. Luciano had donated a large library to the jail when he was detained. Poet's Play, Poet's Play: An Essay on the Art and the Practice of the Poet. (2008) Luciano was also equipped with a phone and self-controlled lighting as a result of his transfer from prison, serving with the US government's wartime initiative, offering mafia assistance in policing the New York waterfront, and later assisting in Naples, Italy, where he was assisting with the Camorra. Corso read after the lights had been out thanks to a light that was specially designed for Luciano to work late. Corso's Cosa Nostra mentors, who acknowledged his genius, encouraged him to read and research.

Corso began writing poetry. He researched the Greek and Roman classics, as well as absorbing encyclopedia and dictionary entries. Will and Ariel Durant's ground-breaking compendium of history and philosophy, he praised for his general education and philosophical wisdom.

Gregory Corso, 21, worked in the garment center by day, and at night, he was a mascot, this time at the Pony Stable Inn, one of Greenwich Village's first lesbian bars. Corso was given a table at which he wrote poetry. Allen Ginsberg, a Columbia College undergraduate, burst into Corso on a night and wondered if he was gay or not." Since his time in jail, Corso, who was not gay, was not concerned with the same sex come-ons, and he had hoped to win a beer off Ginsberg. Ginsberg showed Ginsberg some of the poems he was writing, some of whom were out of jail, and Ginsberg immediately recognized Corso as "spiritually gifted." One poem described a woman who sunbathed in a window bay across the street from Corso's room on 12th Street. The woman turned out to be Ginsberg's erstwhile girl friend, with whom he lived in one of his rare forays into heterosexuality. Corso was invited to their apartment and asked if she would please Corso's sexual curiosity. She agreed, but Corso, a virgin, became too tense as she disrobed, and he ran from the apartment, struggling with his pants. Ginsberg and Corso became fast friends. Ginsberg had a sexual attraction to Corso all his life, which was unrequited.

Corso joined the Beat circle and was adopted by its co-leaders, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, who saw in the young street-wise writer a way to articulate the poetic wisdom of a generation that was largely separate from those preceding it. He created a crude and fragmented mastery of Shelley, Marlowe, and Chatterton at this time. Shelley's A Defense of Poetry (1821, posthumously published in 1840), with its emphasis on the ability of genuine poetic impulse to spark "unwanted combinations of thought" that resulted in "man's "moral development" that resulted in "moral growth," prompting Corso to develop a theory of poetry broadly consistent with Beat poet's founding principles. Poetry became a tool for change in Corso, a way to change the course of society by instilling individual initiative. Shelley was often referred to as a "Revolution of Spirit," a term he used to describe Ginsberg and himself.

Corso moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where many leading writers, including Edward Marshall and John Wieners, were practising with voice. Corso's life there was not "the School of Boston," as these writers were referred to, but the Widener Library of Harvard University. He spent his days there reading the great works of poetry as well as auditing classes in the Greek and Roman Classics. Corso's admiration of the classics stemmed from Durants' books, which he hadn't read in jail. He considered becoming a classics scholar at Harvard. Corso, penniless, lived in an Elliott house on a dorm room floor, and was welcomed by students Peter Sourian, Bobby Sedgwick (brother of Edie), and Paul Grand. He will dress up for dinner and not be noticed. Corso was identified as an interloper by members of the prestigious Porcellian Club, according to Corso who was referred to the Harvard administration as an interloper. Archibald MacLeish met with Corso intending to dismiss him, but Corso showed him his poems and MacLeish accepted Corso's admission as a non-matriculating scholar — a writer in residence. Corso's first published poems appeared in the Harvard Advocate in 1954, and his play In This Hung-up Age—concerning a group of Americans whose bus breaks down midway across Africa—was performed by the revered Poets' Theater the following year, as well as T.S. "Murder in the Cathedral" by Eliot.

The Vestal Lady on Brattle and Other Poems was funded by Harvard and Radcliffe students, including Grand, Sourian, and Sedgwick. The poems included in the collection are usually considered apprentice labor heavily indebted to Corso's reading. However, they are also unique in their innovative use of jazz rhythms, most notable in "Requiem for 'Bird' Parker, a writer's best poem in the book"—cadences of spoken English and hipster jargon, many of which include jargon. In an interview with Gavin Selerie for Riverside Interviews, Corso once outlined his use of rhythm and meter: "My music is built in—it's already natural." I don't like playing with the meter." In other words, Corso believed that the meter would arise naturally from the poet's voice; it is not deliberately chosen.

Reuel Denney wondered if "a tiny group jargon" such as bop language would "sound interesting" to those who were not part of that tradition. "Cannot be equal in the richness of the bebop group jargon [...] with the understanding that his work will be more relevant to a wider audience than clique audience," Corso explained. Ironically, the "limited group jargon," the Beat jargon, became a national idiom within a few years, with terms like "man," "cool," "chick," "hung up," etc.

Despite Corso's reliance on traditional forms and archaic diction, he remained a street-wise poet, compared to Bruce Cook in The Beat Generation as "an urchin Shelley." Corso adopted "the mask of the nascent child whose every display of mad spontaneity and espical perception is deliberately and effectively designed," according to biographer Carolyn Gaiser, who is in some way deceive his audience. However, the poems' best poems are guided by an authentic, distinctive, and highly effective voice that can range from sentimental attachments and pathos to exuberance and fatheraist irreverence toward virtually every facet of poetry except poetry itself. In her biography of Isabella Gardner, Marian Janssen explores Corso's ties with the more traditional literary culture at the start of his career. Corso met Robert Gardner, a member of the elite upper class "Boston Brahmins," during his time in Cambridge, and briefly provided him with financial assistance. It was Robert Gardner who suggested that Corso forward one of his poems to Isabella, a well-known poet and assistant editor of Poetry Magazine. Isabella loved the poem and begged Corso to give her three or four more copies before she handed the poems to the editor, Karl Shapiro. Shapiro deploded Corso's poetry and he never appeared in Poetry Magazine while Shapiro was editor. The gardener sent a letter from Corso to "salve his poetic pride" and began a long but difficult correspondence between the two writers.

Corso and Ginsberg decided to fly separately to San Francisco. Corso spent a short time in Los Angeles and spent at the Los Angeles Zoo. Examiner news morgue. In Denver, Ginsberg's tour was postponed. They were drawn by stories of an iconoclast circle of poets, including Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, and Lew Welch. Kenneth Rexroth, a social writer, lent his apartment as a Friday-night literary salon (Ginsberg's mentor William Carlos Williams, an old friend of Rexroth's, had given him a letter).

Wally Hedrick wanted to stage the famous Six Gallery reading, and Rexroth wanted Rexroth to act as the master of ceremonies in a sense that would span generations. On October 7, 1955, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, Allen Ginsberg, and Gary Snyder read before 100 people (including Kerouac) up from Mexico City. John Hoffman, his late friend, was read poems by Lamantia. Ginsberg performed the first part of "Howl" at his first public reading. Gregory Corso arrived late the next day, missing the historic reading at which he had been intended to read.

The Six Gallery was a success, and the evening sparked many more readings by the now famous Six Gallery poets in the area. It was also a marker of the West Coast Beat campaign's inception in 1956, when Howl was released (City Lights Pocket Poets, no. 1). 4) and its obscenity probe in 1957 brought it to national attention.

Ginsberg and Corso rodesaw from San Francisco, visiting Henry Miller in Big Surrection, and then stopped off in Los Angeles. Lawrence Lipton, Corso, and Ginsberg, among Ana's guests, gave a reading to a group of L.A. literati. Ginsberg's audience was taken off guard by announcing himself and Corso as poets of complete honesty, and the pair proceeded to strip bare naked of clothing, shocking even the most avant-garde of the audience.

Corso and Ginsberg hopped to Mexico City to visit Kerouac, who had been holed up in a room above a whorehouse, authoring "Tristessa" a book. Ginsberg had left after a three-week stay in Mexico City, and Corso waited for a plane ticket. Hope Savage Jr., the mayor of Camden, S.C., convinced Corso that she had been invited by the Library of Congress poet (precursor to the United States). Randall Jarrell and his partner Mary (Poet Laureate) will live with them and become Jarrell's poetic protege. Jarrell, who was unimpressed by the other Beats, found Corso's work to be original and believed he had a lot of promise. Corso stayed with the Jarrells for two months, enjoying his first glimpse of family life ever. However, Kerouac arrived and screamed at the Jarrells', often inebriated and raucous, causing Corso to carouse with him. Corso was disinvited by the Jarrells and returned to New York.

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