The much-anticipated Corso book can now be pre-ordered at https://www.magicaljeep.com/product/corso/165
GREGORY CORSO: TEN TIMES A POET (Roadside Press, 2024) Cover Art by Jonathan Collins. Compiled & Edited by Leon Horton. Co-Editor: Michele McDannold. Contributions by Raymond Foye, Kurt Hemmer, Gregory Stephenson, Ryan Mathews, Jay Jeff Jones, Westley Heine, A. Robert Lee, Ed Sanders, Miriam Sanders, Michael Limnios, Leon Horton, Dan Richter, Kaarina Hollo, Kirby Olson, Gerald Nicosia, Kaye McDonough, Robert Yarra, Neeli Cherkovski, Francis Kuipers, Nina Zivancevic, Ron Whitehead, Kyle Roderick, Dick Ellis, Hugo Frey, Anne Waldman, Rosemary Manno, Chris Felver, Dario Bellini, George Scrivani and William Lessard.
298 pages
7.5 x 9.25 in.
English
ISBN 979-8-9902309-0-3
After Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, Gregory Corso (1930-2001) was the fourth “Daddy” of the socio-literary movement they called the Beat Generation. Those “angel-headed hipsters” who came to prominence in the 1950s were the voice of a disaffected generation of renegades, rebels, and rabble-rousers in the post-war conservative years of President Eisenhower. They’d had enough of conformity, they weren’t going to take it anymore, and they blew just as loud and as deep as their beloved jazz music.
With contributions from such Beat luminaries as Anne Waldman, Gerald Nicosia, Ed Sanders, Rosemary Manno, Neeli Cherkovski, Ron Whitehead, Kaye McDonough, Chris Felver, and many others, Gregory Corso: Ten Times a Poet is a visual and literary feast in celebration of the life and work of the legendary poet. From his traumatic childhood in New York, to his incarceration in Clinton Prison, from his adventures in Greece to his escapades in Rome, from the cradle to the crypt, from his own lips, Gregory Corso didn’t just write poetry – he lived it, with every fiber of his being.
“Composed of memoir, poems, biography, interviews, and literary criticism, Gregory Corso: Ten Times a Poet celebrates and explores the contradictions and brilliance of a misunderstood street bard and visual artist. This fresh appraisal of Corso, which fills in biographical gaps, tells new stories, and appraises his verse, is a reminder that he never stopped being a poet even when his reputation preceded his artistry. As the writers gathered here attest, Corso’s description of poetry as “risked and fevered thinking” belies his mastery of form. His poems were a “refinement of beauty out of a destructive atmosphere,” as Allen Ginsberg put it, in which death, humor, truth, and beauty, love, laugh and brawl.”—Douglas Field, author of Walking in the Dark: James Baldwin, My Father, and me.
“I love this book so much I read it three times. The great thing about Gregory Corso: Ten Times a Poet is the brilliant reminiscences, literary essays, explication of childhood, photographs, interviews, and obituaries that unite the wild man running through his life and the deep poet delivering his final book, The Golden Dot. Read it. Then read it again.”—Victor Bockris, author of The Burroughs-Warhol Connection and With William Burroughs: A Report from the Bunker.
“Reading the essays, memoirs, and other material in Gregory Corso: Ten Times a Poet widened my awareness of who he was. It’s a warts and all portrait that is painted, and I’m glad about that. It would have been wrong to try to show him as perfect in any form, poet or person. The main point is that the best work will survive, as it ought to do.”—Jim Burns, contributor to Beat Scene / author of Modernists, Bohemians, Mavericks.
“I am telling everyone that it is without doubt the most important book published on Corso thus far.”—Gerald Nicosia, author of Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac.
“Finally, the tribute Corso deserves. Over the past few decades we have witnessed a surge of interest in the Beat writers, with Beat studies growing into a vibrant literary field, but as he was in life, Corso remains an outsider even in death. Gregory Corso is not an easy man to write about, but thankfully, we now have Ten Times a Poet, a wonderful collection of essays and poems and interviews in celebration of this most remarkable of men.”—David S. Wills, editor of Beatdom / author of High White Notes: The Rise and Fall of Gonzo Journalism.
