Elegiac Feelings American: Poetry - Softcover

Corso, Gregory

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811200264 ISBN 13: 9780811200264

Publisher: New Directions, 1970

Synopsis

A collection of poems by the renowned Beat poet, Gregory Corso.

Gregory Corso's collection of poems contains works of major proportions. The title poem is a tribute to Jack Kerouac, fusing a memorial to the poet's dead friend with a bitter lament for the present state of America. The second major work, "The Geometric Poem," published previously in a limited edition by Fernanda Pivano in Italy, is a complex visionary restatement of themes from ancient Egyptian religion. Reproduced in facsimile from Corso's handwritten sheets, his marginal decorations, drawings and glyphs are included. The balance of the book is drawn from his shorter poems. Corso's reputation as a leading poet and co-founder of the Beat movement is clearly upheld in these poems. His instinct for integrated lyrical statement, his special contribution to Beat poetry, is as strong as ever; his sense of humor and sexuality have not diminished. But he has added a wider-ranging moral urgency and a new depth of humane solicitude that hold even his strangest visions close to the heart of contemporary feeling.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Gregory Corso's collection of poems, the first in eight years, contains works of major proportions. The title poem is a tribute to Jack Kerouac, fusing a memorial to the poet's dead friend with a bitter lament for the present state of America. Reproduced in facsimile from Corso's handwritten sheets, his marginal decorations, drawings and glyphs are included. The balance of the book is drawn from his shorter poems.

About the Author

Gregory Corso (1930-2001) was abandoned by his mother a month after his birth at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York. Growing up in foster care and on the streets of Little Italy, Corso was a juvenile delinquent who spent time in Clinton Correctional Facility, in the cell recently vacated by gangster "Lucky" Luciano. An aspiring poet, Corso was taken under the wing of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, and became the youngest member of the Beat Generation's inner circle, with whom he lived and work in the Beat Hotel, a lodging house in Paris, during the late fifties. There he created one of his signature works, "Bomb", a poem composed of typewritten strips of paper arranged in the shape of a mushroom cloud. Late in life, Corso became reunited with his mother and maintained a close relationship with her until his death.

Edition details

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 1970
• ISBN 10: 0811200264
• ISBN 13: 9780811200264
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 120