The Happy Birthday of Death - Softcover

Corso, Gregory

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811200272 ISBN 13: 9780811200271

Publisher: New Directions, 1960

Synopsis

Gregory Corso has been much publicized as one of the leading literary spokesmen for the 'Beat Generation, ' together with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs.

It is true that he has been one of the inner circle of the 'Beats' from the first, but many admirers of his poetry feel that it belongs quite as much to other and older traditions in world literature. One of these is the revival of pure poetry whenever an “original”––be it Rimbaud or Whitman––has broken with current verse conventions to give free rein to the magic of language. Another is that ancient pre-occupation of poets––the sense of the immediacy of death. Like Villon or Dylan Thomas, Corso lives close to the mystery of death. It is, perhaps, his central theme, on which variations ranging from the terrible to the comic are sounded. But Corso is seldom macabre. A bursting vitality always carries him back to the sensations of the living, though always it is the reality behind the obvious which has caught his eye. “How I love to probe life,” Corso has written, “That’s what poetry is to me, a wondrous prober… It’s not the metre or measure of a line, a breath; not ‘law’ music; but the assembly of great eye sounds placed into an inspired measured idea.”

About this title

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.

From the Back Cover

Gregory Corso has been much publicized as one of the leading literary spokesmen for the 'Beat Generation, ' together with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs. It is true that he has been one of the inner circle of the 'Beats' from the first, but many admirers of his poetry feel that it belongs quite as much to other and older traditions in world literature.

Edition details

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 1960
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0811200272
• ISBN 13: 9780811200271
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 92