Sarpedon: A Play by Gregory Corso

by Gregory Corso, Rick Schober (Introduction)

Prior to the publication of his first collection of poetry, The Vestal Lady on Brattle and Other Poems (1955), Beat poet Gregory Corso wrote three plays while living as a "stowaway" on the campus of Harvard University. The first of these plays, written in 1954, was Sarpedon, which Corso described as "a great funny Prometheus Unbound ... all in metre and rhyme" and ..".an attempt to replicate Euripides, though the whole shot be an original. Like the great Greek masters, I took off where Homer left an opening (like Euripides did with the fate of Agamemnon). My opening was found in The Iliad. Sarpedon, son of Zeus and Europa, died on the fields of Troy, and Homer had him sent up to Olympus with no complaint from Hades, who got all the others what died there. Thus I have Hades complain, demanding from his brother Zeus, the dead, all the dead, from said fields." The play comprises 17 pages of this volume. It is supplemented with a two-page introduction by Corso himself, taken from a transcript of his prefatory remarks at his 1978 reading of Sarpedon at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Also included are an editor's introduction which provides information about the plays Corso wrote while at Harvard and describes the circumstances surrounding his brief residence in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The volume is footnoted as well. Corso never professed to be a Greek scholar but this brilliant yet little-known work clearly demonstrates the depth of his mastery of classical literature, no doubt picked up from auditing Harvard lectures as well as from the extensive reading he did in the Clinton State Prison library in Dannemora, New York, while serving a three-year sentence for theft. What makes it all the more significant is that, despite the ancient subject matter, his verse is infused with the street slang and Beat vernacular of the time in which it was written, and portends the irreverent humor that would become a hallmark of much of his later work.

36 pages, Paperback

Published July 1, 2016

About the author

Gregory Nunzio Corso was an American poet, youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers.

Reviews

[sophia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I really enjoyed Corso’s humoristic dancing of words, this play lacks his poetic language as well as his ardent knowledge of the greeks. It forgoes the ancient tongue I find him indicating throughout his poems. I personally would have preferred it written like that rather than the fairy modern voices he used to plague helios (even tho I smiled a lot during his ramblings on the gods).

The introduction was very interesting, since I didn’t knew Gregory was living with Edie Sedgwicks brother.

[Arthur Cravan · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's probably my fault for not investing the energy into properly reading it as a play, but I didn't get anything more than 'light enjoyment' out of this. It's mostly lacking Corso's poetics, & even foregoes the faux-ancient tongue I find him employing throughout his poems. I personally would have preferred it written like that than as fairly straight modern dialogue (though this way does add humour in places).

I enjoyed the introduction. I didn't know Corso lived with Edie Sedgwick's brother!