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عيد ميلاد الموت
إنْ سقطتْ أمريكا فإثمُها على مُرشديها
ومبشِّريها ومبلِّغيها سواسيةً
أمريكا اليومَ هي الخطرُ الأكبرُ على أمريكا
نغدو شيوخاً ونحنُ شبابٌ
أمريكا متجدِّدةٌ دوماً والعالمُ متجدِّدٌ دَوماً
جدوى العالمِ تكمنُ في الولادةِ لا في الموت
لكن النموَّ ذهبَ في الاتجاهِ الخطأ
الاتجاهُ الصحيحُ أنْ تزدادَ شباباً دوماً
وفي هذا الاتجاه يصبحُ النموّ شيخوخةً
خطأٌ غريبٌ، خطأٌ غريبٌ ومحزنٌ
لأنَّها نمتْ لتصبحَ شيئاً قديماً
ومبشِّريها ومبلِّغيها سواسيةً
أمريكا اليومَ هي الخطرُ الأكبرُ على أمريكا
نغدو شيوخاً ونحنُ شبابٌ
أمريكا متجدِّدةٌ دوماً والعالمُ متجدِّدٌ دَوماً
جدوى العالمِ تكمنُ في الولادةِ لا في الموت
لكن النموَّ ذهبَ في الاتجاهِ الخطأ
الاتجاهُ الصحيحُ أنْ تزدادَ شباباً دوماً
وفي هذا الاتجاه يصبحُ النموّ شيخوخةً
خطأٌ غريبٌ، خطأٌ غريبٌ ومحزنٌ
لأنَّها نمتْ لتصبحَ شيئاً قديماً
424 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1960
24 people are currently reading
2193 people want to read
About the author
Gregory Corso
115 books181 followersGregory Nunzio Corso was an American poet, youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
February 9, 2023
Gregory Corso was the little brother in the inner circle of Beats, but there was nothing diminutive about his talent. The Happy Birthday of Death is a powerful collection of potent poems. Though most of these poems are not individually famous, Corso’s striking imagery and widely ranging metaphors imbue each with a memorable sense of significance.
Bomb, a poem originally published and printed by City Lights as a calligram in 1958, is included in the collection. The volume preserves it in its iconic, original form by means of a three page foldout, printed on both sides, so you can experience its dynamic visual effect.
So many of these poems stood out for me that it’s hard to focus on just one or two. Hair, Food, Marriage, Clown, Park, Power — all these single word titles contain content that captured my imagination and sent me back to read repeatedly. This collection is clearly a team effort.
And speaking of teams, I must note Corso’s baseball obsession. He draws on it both in poem titles and content. Here are poems titled Dream of a Baseball Star, and Written While Watching The Yankees Play Detroit. Baseball great Ted Williams appears in multiple poems. And in one stanza of Bomb, Corso writes:
Lo the visiting team of Present
the home team of Past…
The Zeusian pandemonium
Hermes racing Owen’s
the Spitball of Buddha
Christ striking out
Luther stealing third
As a guy who has often stated that I love baseball not as a sport, but as poetry in motion, I loved seeing how Corso included his own love of the game in these verses.
Bomb, a poem originally published and printed by City Lights as a calligram in 1958, is included in the collection. The volume preserves it in its iconic, original form by means of a three page foldout, printed on both sides, so you can experience its dynamic visual effect.
So many of these poems stood out for me that it’s hard to focus on just one or two. Hair, Food, Marriage, Clown, Park, Power — all these single word titles contain content that captured my imagination and sent me back to read repeatedly. This collection is clearly a team effort.
And speaking of teams, I must note Corso’s baseball obsession. He draws on it both in poem titles and content. Here are poems titled Dream of a Baseball Star, and Written While Watching The Yankees Play Detroit. Baseball great Ted Williams appears in multiple poems. And in one stanza of Bomb, Corso writes:
Lo the visiting team of Present
the home team of Past…
The Zeusian pandemonium
Hermes racing Owen’s
the Spitball of Buddha
Christ striking out
Luther stealing third
As a guy who has often stated that I love baseball not as a sport, but as poetry in motion, I loved seeing how Corso included his own love of the game in these verses.
November 2, 2012
It was strange, I still don't know exactly what to think of it except that I enjoyed it greatly. At first it seemed almost like pure chaos. The words barely held in relation to the other. Sometimes they appeared as if chosen at random. Perhaps they were. In every poem there was a meaning that defied reason, even by the standards of poetry, but something was there that held it together. An amorphous purpose that can only be communicated in the funky style that Corso writes in.
The guy has a sense of humor. "Marriage" isn't too far from stand up comedy. Then there's more angered poems like "Bomb" which exposes raw, angry horror of war. His work must be read out loud.
I could only take so many poems at a time though. The anarchy of his poems wears me down after 3 or 4, in which I had to duck out for a minute. Each time I came back. And I will read the rest of his works.
The guy has a sense of humor. "Marriage" isn't too far from stand up comedy. Then there's more angered poems like "Bomb" which exposes raw, angry horror of war. His work must be read out loud.
I could only take so many poems at a time though. The anarchy of his poems wears me down after 3 or 4, in which I had to duck out for a minute. Each time I came back. And I will read the rest of his works.
April 3, 2008
Gregory Corso makes my brain burn. He's a wonderful poet who creates passages you can't get out of your head. Here's a sample...
Yes! One momentflash BANG!-and boiling boywar ("Police")
The dead are born in Cheeryland, their buttocks neigh ("Heave The Hive With New Bees")
"She Doesn't Know He Thinks He's God" (poem title)
My beautiful hair is dead, now I'm the rawhead ("Hair")
My sea-ghost rise, and slower hair, silverstreaks my eyes, up up I whirl ("Seaspin")
Images of clowns crying into fistfuls of money and Ted Williams leaning against the Eiffel Tower can be found in this book, too. Greg's got something for everybody.
Yes! One momentflash BANG!-and boiling boywar ("Police")
The dead are born in Cheeryland, their buttocks neigh ("Heave The Hive With New Bees")
"She Doesn't Know He Thinks He's God" (poem title)
My beautiful hair is dead, now I'm the rawhead ("Hair")
My sea-ghost rise, and slower hair, silverstreaks my eyes, up up I whirl ("Seaspin")
Images of clowns crying into fistfuls of money and Ted Williams leaning against the Eiffel Tower can be found in this book, too. Greg's got something for everybody.
February 16, 2011
The absolute exuberance in many of these poems is (perhaps due to the time it was written) still totally earnest and (to me?) completely unironic... the tone of these is built around the preeminent puncuated display of exuberance and excitement -- the exclamation mark.
from "Hair"
"Come back, hair, come back!
I want to grow sideburns!
I want to wash you, comb you, sun you, love you!
As I ran from you wild before --
I thought surely this nineteen hundred and fifty nine of now
that I need no longer bite my fingernails
but have handsome gray hair
to show how profoundly nervous I am.
Damned be hair!
Hair that must be plucked from soup! . . . "
Some of Corso's most famous and best poems are here, such as "Marriage" and "Bomb," but what makes this book really work as a collection of poems is the recurring images/ideas that are often very commonplace or simple, the most notable being hair itself, which gets its own titular poem and touchingly reflected on again in "I Held a Shelley Manuscript,"
"Quickly, my eyes moved quickly,
sought for smell for dust for lace
for dry hair!"
Still, some of these don't age so gracefully as others, and I skip many when I read through it, often for the same reasons that I like the others listed above - when his fascinated hyperness with language or punctuation is applied to some themes or ideas the poems can elicit some eye rolling with a more contemporary/this is not the very beginning of the 1960s mode of reading or thinking about poems. However, these don't detract from the energy or enthusiasm of the other poems or the book as a whole, and in many of the darker poems the subdued animation is still used to great (and opposite) effect.
from "Hair"
"Come back, hair, come back!
I want to grow sideburns!
I want to wash you, comb you, sun you, love you!
As I ran from you wild before --
I thought surely this nineteen hundred and fifty nine of now
that I need no longer bite my fingernails
but have handsome gray hair
to show how profoundly nervous I am.
Damned be hair!
Hair that must be plucked from soup! . . . "
Some of Corso's most famous and best poems are here, such as "Marriage" and "Bomb," but what makes this book really work as a collection of poems is the recurring images/ideas that are often very commonplace or simple, the most notable being hair itself, which gets its own titular poem and touchingly reflected on again in "I Held a Shelley Manuscript,"
"Quickly, my eyes moved quickly,
sought for smell for dust for lace
for dry hair!"
Still, some of these don't age so gracefully as others, and I skip many when I read through it, often for the same reasons that I like the others listed above - when his fascinated hyperness with language or punctuation is applied to some themes or ideas the poems can elicit some eye rolling with a more contemporary/this is not the very beginning of the 1960s mode of reading or thinking about poems. However, these don't detract from the energy or enthusiasm of the other poems or the book as a whole, and in many of the darker poems the subdued animation is still used to great (and opposite) effect.
December 30, 2014
There are moments in this book that took my breath away. Some of it is so wonderful and funny I wanted to run outside and show it to strangers in the street. He has this way of putting words together that makes them seem like shiny toys, like we've been storing them on shelves, and he's going, "No, take them out and play with them!" My favorite line of all: "witch pickles dilled in broomsweat." Those words have been waiting all their lives to be lined up like that.
That said, some of the poems flew right over my head. It isn't that I didn't get the overall gist of what he was saying, it's that there were entire sections that seemed more like incantations or verbal salad. I'm not sure if I wasn't smart enough to understand the word combinations, or if he intended them to be so playful they almost lost their meaning. Strangely, even the poems that were most baffling were a delight to read out loud. The emotion was always clear, and the jumbled words came to life in spoken rhythms.
I highly recommend this. Even if you skip all the poems that make your eyes cross, the rest are worth far more than the price of the book.
That said, some of the poems flew right over my head. It isn't that I didn't get the overall gist of what he was saying, it's that there were entire sections that seemed more like incantations or verbal salad. I'm not sure if I wasn't smart enough to understand the word combinations, or if he intended them to be so playful they almost lost their meaning. Strangely, even the poems that were most baffling were a delight to read out loud. The emotion was always clear, and the jumbled words came to life in spoken rhythms.
I highly recommend this. Even if you skip all the poems that make your eyes cross, the rest are worth far more than the price of the book.
February 5, 2013
Absolutely stunning collection of poetry. Plenty of goodies in here folks.
Corso's growth curve as a poet from The Vestal Lady on Brattle to Gasoline to The Happy Birthday of Death is not linear but explosively exponential.
The breadth and depth of vocabulary and ideas in The Happy Birthday of Death is amazing. Some of Gregory's imagery is rather osbscure at times (like 'werewolve bathtubs') but somehow this does not detract from the enjoyment of reading these poems. If anything, Corso's unusual poetic collocations add to the effect of his poetry. And some of them are simply unforgettable.
My favorite poems from this collection are Marriage, Bomb and the long poem Clown but basically there is very little 'filler' or poor material here, unlike in The Vestal Lady on Brattle where it was clear that Corso was still developing as a poet.
If you are into beat or surrealist poetry, cannot recommend this highly enough. Possibly the best book of beat poetry I have read to date.
Corso's growth curve as a poet from The Vestal Lady on Brattle to Gasoline to The Happy Birthday of Death is not linear but explosively exponential.
The breadth and depth of vocabulary and ideas in The Happy Birthday of Death is amazing. Some of Gregory's imagery is rather osbscure at times (like 'werewolve bathtubs') but somehow this does not detract from the enjoyment of reading these poems. If anything, Corso's unusual poetic collocations add to the effect of his poetry. And some of them are simply unforgettable.
My favorite poems from this collection are Marriage, Bomb and the long poem Clown but basically there is very little 'filler' or poor material here, unlike in The Vestal Lady on Brattle where it was clear that Corso was still developing as a poet.
If you are into beat or surrealist poetry, cannot recommend this highly enough. Possibly the best book of beat poetry I have read to date.
August 10, 2017
Corso was right there with Kerouac, Ginsberg and the rest of the Beats, and he wrote some pretty marvelous poetry. It's gritty, real, angry, and somehow uplifting, despite all that. (When someone's reaction to the horrors of the world is to create art for others, that tends to happen.)
"Bomb" is probably his most famous poem, and it's excellent, and has the added gimmick of looking somewhat like a mushroom cloud, which becomes more than a gimmick when you think of how many disillusioned kids and Beats probably tore it out and taped it to their walls to memorize and impress friends with.
Corso's often overlooked, but he shouldn't be. Also, I bought this at City Lights in San Francisco, so that's an extra piece of awesome right there.
"Bomb" is probably his most famous poem, and it's excellent, and has the added gimmick of looking somewhat like a mushroom cloud, which becomes more than a gimmick when you think of how many disillusioned kids and Beats probably tore it out and taped it to their walls to memorize and impress friends with.
Corso's often overlooked, but he shouldn't be. Also, I bought this at City Lights in San Francisco, so that's an extra piece of awesome right there.
February 1, 2026
I guess you had to be there to get some of the impact that some of the Beat writers had. I loved "Naked Lunch" and "Howl" but found "On the Road" pretentious as hell. So it goes with this, my first (and last) encounter with a complete work by Gregory Corso. My goodness, isn't he a clever boy! This collection has one or two really good poems, but they're bogged down by the rest of it. Thank you, but no, I will not be reading any more of Corso's work. This was more than enough.
September 22, 2021
Excellent book
September 23, 2024
A really great collection of pomes, I really loved Gasoline and in this book you can really see his talents grow. Might have to read it again to fully understand it.
June 2, 2023
“I’m going bald :( So I write a poem to my lost hair”
September 4, 2025
we had some good lines in here but unfortunately they were slivers between piles of half baked formless pieces that treated very basic philosophy as the Most Original Ideas in the World. preesh the ACAB poem though, and the anti-war sentiment. these poems probably sound better spoken aloud.
June 14, 2020
I found that most of these poems are hard to understand without prior knowledge of greek mythology and the Shakespearean idiom. This transcription of a Ginsberg lecture regarding Corso and Shakespeare helped me understand Corso's approach: https://allenginsberg.org/2016/05/cor...
February 11, 2026
I'd give this a 4.5 stars so I'll give it a 5.
I've heard of Gregory Corso before, I didn't really know him and still don't, the only thing I knew is that he was apart of the Beat Generation, although he was much younger than the core ones. I got this book when visiting the City Lights Booksellers (or Bookstore, I call it both) for my birthday. It has always been a dream of mine to go, and it's probably now my favorite place on earth, I would go there every single day if I could. My favorite part was the upstairs, where all the Beat authors and poets were. They had these two chairs that made me laugh, they both had words written on it by I assume Ferlinghetti which read 'poet's chair' and 'NOT the poet's chair'. Naturally I sat in the poet's chair while I made my sister sat in the other one and I felt so happy. I don't know how old it is but I like imagining so many great poets, like Corso, sat there too :).
But back to why I'm saying this, when I saw this title right next to the Burroughs section, I laughed and that's why I got it. I was already in a very depressive state from earlier than night and I thought "Happy Birthday of Death, huh that's like my birthday this year". My sister also laughed too because the coincendence of a book saying Happy Birthday on my birthday was just hilarious.
This month I was able to read this with my full undivided attention and I liked this poetry collection a lot! I enjoy reading poetry, but sometimes it's hard to find a collection where you like almost every single poem. Because to me, some poetry collections I can't finish if it's not weighed well with good and bad to me so this was the exact opposite. I really enjoyed the short ones and think that is Corso's strength, especially Medieval Anatomy, that's probably one of my favorites. I also like how death sort of seeped itself into every poem, that was quite beautiful. There were some I didn't really like because they were clunky, especially to roll off the tongue and they were all in the first half, the second half was much nicer. But maybe that's a me problem because I still have to go to speech therapy ha but those ones weren't enjoyable and took longer to process where it felt like a chore and I didn't feel anything.
On the contrary, there were many poems in this where I did feel things. One particular poem that made me put the book down and think for a couple days was 'Hair', that might be my favorite poem out of them all, I even have some of it memorized and listened to the recording of the earlier draft. I cried while reading it because it struck me as quite personal and I think it's supposed to be a commentary on how many people feel about hair and aging and losing hair because of aging, either negative or positive, mainly negative. I have quite thick hair, it grows really fast so I lose it really fast but especially when I'm quite sad and I don't care of my hair like I want to and need to. I also really hate my hair at times, especially when I can't style it the way I want to because I don't know how to cut it, and other people, especially my peers at school, would laugh and make fun of my hair and the way the poem kind of went through those exact feelings and experiences was amazing. So anyway, I really loved 'Hair', I think it's brilliant especially lines 10-28, those made me cry the most.
Another poem that really hit close to my heart was 'Marriage'. I'm quite scared of the uncertainty of marriage and what life it might lead me. So sometimes I don't want to get married at all and I can't imagine myself getting married it's a hard thing to envision. And even if I do get married, it's like what the poem says, what do I do? How do I act? What if I'm doing something wrong? That really struck a chord with me and maybe that's why I don't like marriage. But I also want to get married because I don't want to die alone, unwanted when I'm older. Saying that, it's a really beautiful poem and I may not be a bachelor scared about marriage, but the feeling just struck me and made me just think in awe. I think another poem I should highlight that matches the theme of 'Marriage' is 'She Doesn't Know He Thinks He's God'. It's a very short poem, about an unhappy couple with a newborn and god, I hate men and it's funny because I know a man exactly like this so it made me get really mad and go, wow, that really does happen.
Enough sad poems, I'll talk about one that made me really happy that I related to was 'I Held a Shelley Manuscript (written in Houghton Library, Harvard)'. It's a really short poem but as a person who also really loves people and seeing artefacts, I just really felt what Corso was feeling in that moment because yeah I would also want to steal it. 'Spring's Melodious Herald' was a pretty romantic one and I liked that one too, it made me giggle.
Oh I can go on and on about almost every single poem in this and I feel like I'm talking too much yet making no sense so here's a list of my favorites. Honestly I will be re-reading and annotating this book for years to come and always referencing it, because wow. The pull out of Bomb is so cool, I kind of want to hang it on my wall, maybe if I get another copy. Also some of the words Corso made up are cool as hell!
THE LIST
- Hair
- Let Us Inspect the Lyre
- Transformation & Escape
- Discord
- I Held a Shelley Manuscript
- 1953
- On Pont Neuf
- Waterchew!
- Poets Hitchhiking on the Highway
- Marriage
- Bomb
- Food
- She Doesn't Know He Thinks He's God
- The Frightening Difference
- Death
- Medieval Anatomy
- Giant Turtle (from a Walt Disney film)
- Paranoia in Crete
- Clown
- Away One Year
- On Palatine
- A Moment's Wish
- Park
- The Sacre-Coeur Cafe
- For Bunny Lang
- Mortal Infliction
- Looking at the Map of the World
- Owl
- All Life is a Rotary Club
- Spring's Melodious Herald
- Power (for Allen Ginsberg)
- Army
- Police
I've heard of Gregory Corso before, I didn't really know him and still don't, the only thing I knew is that he was apart of the Beat Generation, although he was much younger than the core ones. I got this book when visiting the City Lights Booksellers (or Bookstore, I call it both) for my birthday. It has always been a dream of mine to go, and it's probably now my favorite place on earth, I would go there every single day if I could. My favorite part was the upstairs, where all the Beat authors and poets were. They had these two chairs that made me laugh, they both had words written on it by I assume Ferlinghetti which read 'poet's chair' and 'NOT the poet's chair'. Naturally I sat in the poet's chair while I made my sister sat in the other one and I felt so happy. I don't know how old it is but I like imagining so many great poets, like Corso, sat there too :).
But back to why I'm saying this, when I saw this title right next to the Burroughs section, I laughed and that's why I got it. I was already in a very depressive state from earlier than night and I thought "Happy Birthday of Death, huh that's like my birthday this year". My sister also laughed too because the coincendence of a book saying Happy Birthday on my birthday was just hilarious.
This month I was able to read this with my full undivided attention and I liked this poetry collection a lot! I enjoy reading poetry, but sometimes it's hard to find a collection where you like almost every single poem. Because to me, some poetry collections I can't finish if it's not weighed well with good and bad to me so this was the exact opposite. I really enjoyed the short ones and think that is Corso's strength, especially Medieval Anatomy, that's probably one of my favorites. I also like how death sort of seeped itself into every poem, that was quite beautiful. There were some I didn't really like because they were clunky, especially to roll off the tongue and they were all in the first half, the second half was much nicer. But maybe that's a me problem because I still have to go to speech therapy ha but those ones weren't enjoyable and took longer to process where it felt like a chore and I didn't feel anything.
On the contrary, there were many poems in this where I did feel things. One particular poem that made me put the book down and think for a couple days was 'Hair', that might be my favorite poem out of them all, I even have some of it memorized and listened to the recording of the earlier draft. I cried while reading it because it struck me as quite personal and I think it's supposed to be a commentary on how many people feel about hair and aging and losing hair because of aging, either negative or positive, mainly negative. I have quite thick hair, it grows really fast so I lose it really fast but especially when I'm quite sad and I don't care of my hair like I want to and need to. I also really hate my hair at times, especially when I can't style it the way I want to because I don't know how to cut it, and other people, especially my peers at school, would laugh and make fun of my hair and the way the poem kind of went through those exact feelings and experiences was amazing. So anyway, I really loved 'Hair', I think it's brilliant especially lines 10-28, those made me cry the most.
Another poem that really hit close to my heart was 'Marriage'. I'm quite scared of the uncertainty of marriage and what life it might lead me. So sometimes I don't want to get married at all and I can't imagine myself getting married it's a hard thing to envision. And even if I do get married, it's like what the poem says, what do I do? How do I act? What if I'm doing something wrong? That really struck a chord with me and maybe that's why I don't like marriage. But I also want to get married because I don't want to die alone, unwanted when I'm older. Saying that, it's a really beautiful poem and I may not be a bachelor scared about marriage, but the feeling just struck me and made me just think in awe. I think another poem I should highlight that matches the theme of 'Marriage' is 'She Doesn't Know He Thinks He's God'. It's a very short poem, about an unhappy couple with a newborn and god, I hate men and it's funny because I know a man exactly like this so it made me get really mad and go, wow, that really does happen.
Enough sad poems, I'll talk about one that made me really happy that I related to was 'I Held a Shelley Manuscript (written in Houghton Library, Harvard)'. It's a really short poem but as a person who also really loves people and seeing artefacts, I just really felt what Corso was feeling in that moment because yeah I would also want to steal it. 'Spring's Melodious Herald' was a pretty romantic one and I liked that one too, it made me giggle.
Oh I can go on and on about almost every single poem in this and I feel like I'm talking too much yet making no sense so here's a list of my favorites. Honestly I will be re-reading and annotating this book for years to come and always referencing it, because wow. The pull out of Bomb is so cool, I kind of want to hang it on my wall, maybe if I get another copy. Also some of the words Corso made up are cool as hell!
THE LIST
- Hair
- Let Us Inspect the Lyre
- Transformation & Escape
- Discord
- I Held a Shelley Manuscript
- 1953
- On Pont Neuf
- Waterchew!
- Poets Hitchhiking on the Highway
- Marriage
- Bomb
- Food
- She Doesn't Know He Thinks He's God
- The Frightening Difference
- Death
- Medieval Anatomy
- Giant Turtle (from a Walt Disney film)
- Paranoia in Crete
- Clown
- Away One Year
- On Palatine
- A Moment's Wish
- Park
- The Sacre-Coeur Cafe
- For Bunny Lang
- Mortal Infliction
- Looking at the Map of the World
- Owl
- All Life is a Rotary Club
- Spring's Melodious Herald
- Power (for Allen Ginsberg)
- Army
- Police
July 16, 2008
"the faint glow in the belly of enlightenment, is the old spouting their know" Read it and THINK
Merged review:
How to love the bomb an stop worrying
Merged review:
How to love the bomb an stop worrying
October 12, 2012
My favorite book when I was a little girl. Corso was a genius.
May 18, 2014
Corso has a bit of a clang to him; Read it and you'll immediately understand what I mean. The foldout for "Bomb" was worth my secondhand $6.
March 10, 2020
When I like Corso, I really like Corso, and there are some gems in here, but he leans way too hard on the sonic quality in his poems, and a result, so many of them just sound like nonsense to me.
I love that on the flyleaf of this collection is a list of Saleable titles with this title chosen; all the potential titles are lines from poems.
General themes include the life of imagination, writing poetry, viewing art, reading literature, classical Greece and Rome, baseball, war, and food. One thing Corso does very effectively is reuse lines in subsequent poems; for example, he reuses a line from a humorous poem later in a very serious poem.
Comments on particular poems:
from "Notes after Blacking Out"
"All is answerable I need not know the answer / Poetry is seeking the answer"
"The old are secretive about their Know"
"Nothing comes after this wildbright Joke"
from "Seaspin"
"To drown to be slow hair"
from "Hair," an incredibly funny poem re: balding
"To lie in bed and be hairless is a blunder only God could allow"
"How to stand thunderous on an English cliff / a hectic Heathcliff?" *dies laughing*
from "Let Us Inspect the Lyre"
"No thing of beauty was meant for inspection / Else detected / it would blush / and ache to endure."
"Marriage": in this poem the speaker imagines marrying a stereotypically perfect girl. He dissects the fantasy of a perfect relationship; something isn't right, isn't working underneath even though all seems to be going well, and it's his contrariness and dissatisfaction and raillery against the status quo. The poem is able to see the marriage as positive in a quiet moment, one in which a new father is up in the middle of the night (not a moment many would single out as the positive moment of a marriage), but ultimately the speaker rejects marriage; he doubts his suitability as a husband, as a father though he worries about being old and unmarried and unloved
"Bomb" is in the shape of a mushroom cloud.
The collection ends with a cluster of very political poems about the horrors of war and of policing. The final poem "1959" is about the struggle to find meaning; the speaker can almost find it in the classical world of ancient Greece, but that meaning dissolves in the electric light of the modern world. The collection concludes on a note of despair. Is poetry powerless to create lasting meaning?
I love that on the flyleaf of this collection is a list of Saleable titles with this title chosen; all the potential titles are lines from poems.
General themes include the life of imagination, writing poetry, viewing art, reading literature, classical Greece and Rome, baseball, war, and food. One thing Corso does very effectively is reuse lines in subsequent poems; for example, he reuses a line from a humorous poem later in a very serious poem.
Comments on particular poems:
from "Notes after Blacking Out"
"All is answerable I need not know the answer / Poetry is seeking the answer"
"The old are secretive about their Know"
"Nothing comes after this wildbright Joke"
from "Seaspin"
"To drown to be slow hair"
from "Hair," an incredibly funny poem re: balding
"To lie in bed and be hairless is a blunder only God could allow"
"How to stand thunderous on an English cliff / a hectic Heathcliff?" *dies laughing*
from "Let Us Inspect the Lyre"
"No thing of beauty was meant for inspection / Else detected / it would blush / and ache to endure."
"Marriage": in this poem the speaker imagines marrying a stereotypically perfect girl. He dissects the fantasy of a perfect relationship; something isn't right, isn't working underneath even though all seems to be going well, and it's his contrariness and dissatisfaction and raillery against the status quo. The poem is able to see the marriage as positive in a quiet moment, one in which a new father is up in the middle of the night (not a moment many would single out as the positive moment of a marriage), but ultimately the speaker rejects marriage; he doubts his suitability as a husband, as a father though he worries about being old and unmarried and unloved
"Bomb" is in the shape of a mushroom cloud.
The collection ends with a cluster of very political poems about the horrors of war and of policing. The final poem "1959" is about the struggle to find meaning; the speaker can almost find it in the classical world of ancient Greece, but that meaning dissolves in the electric light of the modern world. The collection concludes on a note of despair. Is poetry powerless to create lasting meaning?
March 30, 2022
Corso was the star of Alfred Leslie's short film, Pull My Daisy!! I think the writing was likely Kerouac's in that case but it is Corso seen performing the words. That movie is all over the internet now, but when I saw it at the Beat film festival at the Dobie, it was one of the highlights.
I read this in high school from a copy in the public library. I xeroxed my fav pages and cut them out and taped the pieces to the sliding door of my closet. So those are the poems that still sit with me today. Though that closet door is no doubt long gone now.
I finally found a copy from a bookstore in Havertown, Pa. Very pristine except for a slight brown coffee stain on the last couple of pages. Some of it is a bit flatter to read years later. It's very obviously a compilation of mostly notes to self as he sightsees around Europe.
He makes direct references to peyote and blacking out so that is likely at least some of what is going on here. These are the first outbursts of the psychedelic era.
There's also a passing influence of the koans of Zen Buddhism. In a nihilistic line like:
"Nothing sits on nothing in a nothing of many nothings. a nothing king. "
Eastern mysticism is also one of the fixations of that moment in time. But the imagery of Catholicism (and some occasional allusions to Classical myths) are what is strongest here. That may be a reaction to the settings he was writing in or there may be something more personal to it than that.
As has been said, it is meant to be read aloud. It is all about the textures of the human voice and the phonologies of 1950's American English. This is a text that is meant to be performative. In fact, I cannot read these lines without hearing him reading aloud in his voice, on a stage, picturing some cafe or bookstore audience in San Francisco or Greenwich Village (as cliche as that is now its relevant here). If I am accurate it should be punctuated by jazz riffs from Charlie Parker, Miles Davis or Dizzy Gillespie. If I am also accurate, there should be the shadow of a policeman or FBI red squad sniffing about the door for anarchist saboteurs. (And the enforcers of law and order also fit into some of these poems.) But I can only keep so many things in my mind at one time.
For all the people out there who are ready to dismiss this collection of poets as the entitled machismo of a group of self absorbed fraternity brothers, (and admittedly they do often get portrayed that way on film.), it should be remembered that the mist of queerness hangs over all these books, whether out-of-the-closet gay anthems like Burroughs and Ginsberg or the self immolation of dysfunctional polyamorous failures in Kerouac and Cassidy. So without addressing that aspect, and that context, one is making a huge omission. And Andrea Dworkin's barbs cloaked as they are as Second Wave Feminism, just seem all that much more of the same homophobic self-justifying nonsense that have too long haunted our society, than anything which actually deserve merit today. And that is precisely the reason why we need to read these books now, I think. But I digress.
(Just consult your local news source for examples of book bannings, homophobic and white-supremacist and misogynist inspired laws being passed right now if you need more of a reason.)
This is honestly, an imperfect book. He does not have the weight or poetic style of the Whitman like ranting ecstasies of Allen Ginsberg, or the obscure experimental cut-ups of William S Burroughs or the charismatic run on stream of consiousness of Kerouac himself. Corso is much lighter and much more snarky. Like a snickering lumpenproletarian with a James Cagney sneer. One surrealist joke after another. Somewhere between the wistful musings of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the comic substance of Lenny Bruce.
But all these people were in the same circle as Corso, obviously, and cannot really be separated out, but his writing remains after all these years some of my most loved.
I read this in high school from a copy in the public library. I xeroxed my fav pages and cut them out and taped the pieces to the sliding door of my closet. So those are the poems that still sit with me today. Though that closet door is no doubt long gone now.
I finally found a copy from a bookstore in Havertown, Pa. Very pristine except for a slight brown coffee stain on the last couple of pages. Some of it is a bit flatter to read years later. It's very obviously a compilation of mostly notes to self as he sightsees around Europe.
He makes direct references to peyote and blacking out so that is likely at least some of what is going on here. These are the first outbursts of the psychedelic era.
There's also a passing influence of the koans of Zen Buddhism. In a nihilistic line like:
"Nothing sits on nothing in a nothing of many nothings. a nothing king. "
Eastern mysticism is also one of the fixations of that moment in time. But the imagery of Catholicism (and some occasional allusions to Classical myths) are what is strongest here. That may be a reaction to the settings he was writing in or there may be something more personal to it than that.
As has been said, it is meant to be read aloud. It is all about the textures of the human voice and the phonologies of 1950's American English. This is a text that is meant to be performative. In fact, I cannot read these lines without hearing him reading aloud in his voice, on a stage, picturing some cafe or bookstore audience in San Francisco or Greenwich Village (as cliche as that is now its relevant here). If I am accurate it should be punctuated by jazz riffs from Charlie Parker, Miles Davis or Dizzy Gillespie. If I am also accurate, there should be the shadow of a policeman or FBI red squad sniffing about the door for anarchist saboteurs. (And the enforcers of law and order also fit into some of these poems.) But I can only keep so many things in my mind at one time.
For all the people out there who are ready to dismiss this collection of poets as the entitled machismo of a group of self absorbed fraternity brothers, (and admittedly they do often get portrayed that way on film.), it should be remembered that the mist of queerness hangs over all these books, whether out-of-the-closet gay anthems like Burroughs and Ginsberg or the self immolation of dysfunctional polyamorous failures in Kerouac and Cassidy. So without addressing that aspect, and that context, one is making a huge omission. And Andrea Dworkin's barbs cloaked as they are as Second Wave Feminism, just seem all that much more of the same homophobic self-justifying nonsense that have too long haunted our society, than anything which actually deserve merit today. And that is precisely the reason why we need to read these books now, I think. But I digress.
(Just consult your local news source for examples of book bannings, homophobic and white-supremacist and misogynist inspired laws being passed right now if you need more of a reason.)
This is honestly, an imperfect book. He does not have the weight or poetic style of the Whitman like ranting ecstasies of Allen Ginsberg, or the obscure experimental cut-ups of William S Burroughs or the charismatic run on stream of consiousness of Kerouac himself. Corso is much lighter and much more snarky. Like a snickering lumpenproletarian with a James Cagney sneer. One surrealist joke after another. Somewhere between the wistful musings of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the comic substance of Lenny Bruce.
But all these people were in the same circle as Corso, obviously, and cannot really be separated out, but his writing remains after all these years some of my most loved.
May 12, 2024
Nothing particularly new or interesting here - it might have been bold and fresh back in the day, but in the present it just seems too full of bombast and needless experimentation to pass off as great. Experimentation is a good and necessary thing in art, but you at least have to make sure of the fact that the results themselves are good. This poetry contained in this book comes across as having been written in experimental styles for the mere sake of being so, and the work itself fails to be of any real interest to anyone who's sampled enough poetry of the sort in their time. He's no Whitman, he's no Rimbaud, he's not even a Ginsberg, if anything he's a decent representation of why the Beats are more talked about than read. He gets a decent line in here and there, and there are certainly worse poets out there, but don't expect anything that will really stick with you from this volume.
December 11, 2017
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM
BOOM ye skies and BOOM ye suns
BOOM BOOM ye moons ye stars BOOM
nights ye BOOM ye days ye BOOM
BOOM BOOM ye winds ye clouds ye rains
go BANG ye lakes ye oceans BING
Barracuda BOOM and cougar BOOM
Ubangi BOOM orangutang
BING BANG BONG BOOM bee bear baboon
ye BANG ye BONG ye BING
the tail the fin the wing
Yes Yes into our midst a bomb will fall
Flowers will leap in joy their roots aching
Fields will kneel proud beneath the halleluyahs of the wind
January 8, 2019
Poetry has alwas been a favorite genre of literature for me. Being fascinated with the artistic representation of death and the more negative side of life, when I saw my copy of "The Happy Birthday of Death" at one of my favorite independent bookstores, I had to buy it and I had to read it.
While I did not like all of the poems, there were many poems that I enjoyed such as 'Death,' 'Clown,' 'For Bunny Lang,' 'Owl,' '1959,' 'Marriage,' 'Bomb,' 'Gargoyles,' and 'The Sacré Cœur Café.’ Check these out.
"The clowns allowance of joy to man is useless / Man is glued to sorrow and there is no escape / All your slapstick gold...useless." ('Clown')
While I did not like all of the poems, there were many poems that I enjoyed such as 'Death,' 'Clown,' 'For Bunny Lang,' 'Owl,' '1959,' 'Marriage,' 'Bomb,' 'Gargoyles,' and 'The Sacré Cœur Café.’ Check these out.
"The clowns allowance of joy to man is useless / Man is glued to sorrow and there is no escape / All your slapstick gold...useless." ('Clown')
September 29, 2024
لنمتْ جميعاً
لنتمرَّنْ قليلاً
ونتظاهرَ بالموتِ لبضعِ ساعاتٍ
ولننسجْ جميعاً أكفاناً أبديَّةً أنيقة
ونبني مقابرَ مُذهلةً
......
أيَّتها الآلهةُ! أيُّها البشر!
مَنْ ذا يريدُ أنْ يموتَ بينَ الناس؟
لاسيَّما حينَ لا يستطيعونَ فعلَ شيءٍ سوى الهراء
إلى السينما -إلى السينما
هذا هو المكانُ الذي أهرعُ إليهِ
حينَ أشعرُ بأنَّني سأموتُ
وقدْ نجحْتُ حتَّى الآن.
.......
وأنا أصرخُ: الأصدقاءُ عبوديةٌ! وجنونٌ!
كلُّهمْ مضيعةٌ لوقتِ الفَرْدِ-
بلا أصدقاءٍ الحياةُ مختلفةٌ وليستْ تعيسةً
هل يحتاجُ الفردُ إلى صديقٍ في الجنَّة.
لنتمرَّنْ قليلاً
ونتظاهرَ بالموتِ لبضعِ ساعاتٍ
ولننسجْ جميعاً أكفاناً أبديَّةً أنيقة
ونبني مقابرَ مُذهلةً
......
أيَّتها الآلهةُ! أيُّها البشر!
مَنْ ذا يريدُ أنْ يموتَ بينَ الناس؟
لاسيَّما حينَ لا يستطيعونَ فعلَ شيءٍ سوى الهراء
إلى السينما -إلى السينما
هذا هو المكانُ الذي أهرعُ إليهِ
حينَ أشعرُ بأنَّني سأموتُ
وقدْ نجحْتُ حتَّى الآن.
.......
وأنا أصرخُ: الأصدقاءُ عبوديةٌ! وجنونٌ!
كلُّهمْ مضيعةٌ لوقتِ الفَرْدِ-
بلا أصدقاءٍ الحياةُ مختلفةٌ وليستْ تعيسةً
هل يحتاجُ الفردُ إلى صديقٍ في الجنَّة.
August 24, 2020
Many of Corso's poem spark so wildly that I cannot keep up with the associations and connections. The language shatters conventions and the range and sweep of his imagination are phenomenal. But what aces it for me in this volume is his centerpiece foldout: the tri-folded concrete poem shaped like an exploded atomic bomb called, "Bomb." It is the strongest, most moving poem in the collection--a classic.
October 9, 2022
This feels like an outpouring of creativity, written over the course of several years. Its very dense. Most of Corso’s greatest hits are here, and are always enjoyable when read again. The images and tone are stark but hopeful, with many references to Ancient Greece and Rome sprinkled about. The feeling of bygone time and mythological imagery. Crazed policemen and Generals and death.
December 15, 2024
يبكي الموت لأن الموت رجل
يقضي اليوم كُلّه في السينما
حين يموت طفل
واحد من أجمل كتب الشعر التي قرأتها في العام. كنت أحتاج إلى قراءة مشروع الرجل بهذا الشكل الذي يجمع بين سيرته وبين تطور مشروعه الشعري. شكرًا منشورات تكوين. شكرًا للمترجم.
يقضي اليوم كُلّه في السينما
حين يموت طفل
واحد من أجمل كتب الشعر التي قرأتها في العام. كنت أحتاج إلى قراءة مشروع الرجل بهذا الشكل الذي يجمع بين سيرته وبين تطور مشروعه الشعري. شكرًا منشورات تكوين. شكرًا للمترجم.
March 19, 2020
The only beat that might possibly rival Huncke in his ability to communicate truth through the printed page.
September 1, 2020
These poems were very loud. Exciting, challenging at times, which I enjoy, but it became exhausting with so many exclamations. Maybe I’m just not cut for the beats.
July 21, 2022
I enjoyed it a lot, whether I really understood the majority of the poems is another thing entirely.
It slapped though
It slapped though
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