Childhood spent unloved and abandoned by his mother and father. Teenaged years spent jailed in New York for petty theft. 20s and 30s spent starving and writing poetry in the streets of Paris and Venice. Corso "beat" the odds and lived until the ripe old age of 71. He died January 17th, 2001.
Gregory Corso was an impish poet of wide repute, a girlfriend stealer of Jack Kerouac, and so immensely devious and lovable that he had the poverty stricken Ginsberg and Bourroughs as his patrons.
Young Gregory was sick. Sick on alcohol, sick on junk, sick on love, sick on words, sick on pussy juice, sick on famous surrealists like Marcel Duchamp (literally because Corso puked all over his house and then cut off his necktie with a knife at a party).
Corso is a strangely unsung hero of today. Why unsung? My guess is because my generation and the generation that follows me (if I may be so bold) are a bunch of illiterate fuckheads. This doesn't count the Pax Acidus readers, of course. I believe all poetry going forward will owe a debt to him. Why? Because Gregory is the bomb.
