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Selected Poems
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- GenresPoetry
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1962
12 people want to read
About the author
Gregory Corso
119 books184 followersGregory Nunzio Corso was an American poet, youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers.
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April 12, 2019
This is a great selection of some of Corso's strongest work covering his first four books - Vestal Lady on Brattle, Gasoline, The Happy Birthday of Death and Long Live Man but precedes the actual publication of Long Live Man.
The editors at Eyre & Spottiswoode certainly made good choices when they hand-picked Corso's best poems from the 50s and early 60s. I think this is an excellent introduction to the work of this legendary street-urchin poet and then if you are up for the real 'banquet', then you should probably check out Mindfield (which I will soon be reading in full) which features a much more extensive coverage of his oeuvre. Unfortunately, the 'golden dot' as Gregory put it himself, I'm talking about a GREGORY CORSO: COLLECTED POEMS, has yet to see the light of day, perhaps due to the fact that Gregory revised his poems so often making it hard for us to tell which version was the 'officially-sanctioned' and 'definitive' one.
In summary, there is hardly a weak poem in this collection and it is full of great lines, wisdom, humor and interesting 'mundane' observations on whichever country he happens to be in at the time (either USA or the UK predominantly but sometimes parts of Europe as well), which all fit together nicely amidst Corso's signature and inimitable style. Go get it.
The editors at Eyre & Spottiswoode certainly made good choices when they hand-picked Corso's best poems from the 50s and early 60s. I think this is an excellent introduction to the work of this legendary street-urchin poet and then if you are up for the real 'banquet', then you should probably check out Mindfield (which I will soon be reading in full) which features a much more extensive coverage of his oeuvre. Unfortunately, the 'golden dot' as Gregory put it himself, I'm talking about a GREGORY CORSO: COLLECTED POEMS, has yet to see the light of day, perhaps due to the fact that Gregory revised his poems so often making it hard for us to tell which version was the 'officially-sanctioned' and 'definitive' one.
In summary, there is hardly a weak poem in this collection and it is full of great lines, wisdom, humor and interesting 'mundane' observations on whichever country he happens to be in at the time (either USA or the UK predominantly but sometimes parts of Europe as well), which all fit together nicely amidst Corso's signature and inimitable style. Go get it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review