January 24, 2001

Gregory Corso: My encounter with a
Beat legend

By ROGER ANDERSON Scripps Howard News Service

I was saddened but also strangely relieved the other day when a story crossed my desk saying that the Beat poet Gregory Corso had died.

Ever since I was 14, I've considered Corso a great poet. Back then, I imbibed his work along with the poems of Allen Ginsberg and the novels of Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, three men with whom he was intimately associated.

While Ginsberg's poetry was exciting and grandiose, filled with big images and big emotions, Corso's work was delightful for being intentionally, perhaps perversely obscure - and when you're a 14-year-old anarchistic wordsmith wannabe, obscure is what you admire above all.

But his poetry wasn't just obscure - It was beautiful. And it wasn't obscure the way T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound were obscure; Corso didn't expect you to figure out what he was getting at.

It was all a lot of fireworks and depth bombs of image, beauty and syllable, as contained in books with titles like "Gasoline," "The Happy Birthday of Death" and, much later, "Elegiac Feelings American," dedicated to Kerouac after his death.

Corso, who died Jan. 17 at age 70 in Robbinsdale, Minn., was the last of the four - Kerouac passed away long ago, in 1969, Ginsberg and Burroughs during the last few years. Although Kerouac, who died before he became commercially popular with a new generation, barely eked out a living with his books, Ginsberg became a university professor (and one of the most famous poets in the world) and Burroughs' books earned him big money and godhood within the avant garde subculture.

The best Corso could do was an on-and-off teaching position at the Nairopa Institute in Boulder, Colo., where he was on the faculty of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. (No surprise that it was Corso who came up with the name.) But by the time of his death, he had been on the outs with the Nairopa folks for some time.

My path and Corso's actually crossed back in 1985, when I was a novice reporter and my editor asked me to interview the Beat legend. We met in San Francisco's North Beach district before a reading Corso was scheduled to give. I was shocked to discover that my hero of old was in fact an obnoxious drug addict who anyone on the street would take for a derelict. Flashes of charm and intelligence barely stemmed the flow of offensive behavior. He even hit me up for a $20 “loan."

I wrote and published a piece that didn't make any bones about Corso's rough edges, although I was careful to refrain from editorial comment. Later I was wracked with guilt thinking I had betrayed Corso by exposing him as an unreliable nuisance, perhaps ruining his chances at some day earning a livelihood.

And that's why I say I was strangely relieved by the story that brought me news of his death because it quoted numerous individuals who knew him well and who also characterized Corso as an annoying and incorrigible heroin addict who was barely fit for human society. So I wasn't a lone gunman.

And I agree with what those people also said that despite his bad behavior, Corso's poetic gift was nonpareil and his contribution to American letters substantial. Sometimes it's not such a bad thing that only the work survives. On the other hand, he still owes me $20.

Roger Anderson is arts and entertainment editor at Scripps Howard News Service.

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