“Homer,” Gregory Corso

I am not politic.
I am not patriotic.
I am nationalistic!
I boast well the beauty of America to all the people in Europe.
In me they do not see their vision of America.
O whenever I pass an American Embassy I don’t know what to feel!
Sometimes I want to rush in and scream: “I’m American!”
but instead go a few paces down to the American Bar
get drunk and cry: “I’m no American!”
The men of politics I love are but youth’s fantasy:
The fine profile of Washington on coins stamps & tobacco wraps
The handsomeness and death-in-the-snow of Hamilton.
The eyeglasses shoe-buckles kites & keys of Ben Franklin.
The sweet melancholy of Lincoln.
The way I see Christ, as something romantic & unreal, is the way I see them.
An American is unique among peoples.
He looks and acts like a boyman.
He never looks cruel in uniform.
He is rednecked portly rich and jolly.
White-haired serious Harvard, kind and wry.
A convention man a family man a rotary man & practical joker.
He is moonfaced cunning well-meaning & righteously mean.
He is Madison Avenue, handsome, in-the-know, and superstitious.
He is odd, happy, quicker than light, shameless, and heroic
Great yawn of youth!
The young don’t seem interested in politics anymore.
Politics has lost its romance!
The “bloody kitchen” has drowned!
And all that is left are those granite
façades of Pentagon, Justice, and Department—
Politicians do not know youth!
They depend on the old
and the old depend on them
and lo! this has given youth a chance
to think of heaven in their independence.
No need to give them liberty or freedom
where they’re at— —  

Excerpt from Gregory Corso’s America Politica Historia, in Spontaneity

(via avanelle)

“Is it true (that) the last time you visited Jack that you were turned away?”

Clockwise: Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Paul Carrol, Chicago at time of Big Table reading, January 1959. c. Allen Ginsberg Estate

(via sadeyedsun)

derrierelasalledebains:

Bob Kaufman

Gregory Corso

derrierelasalledebains:

Committee on Poetry, Inc. farm, Cherry Valley, New York Thanksgiving 1969. From left, standing: Julius Orlovsky, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gordon Ball, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley. Front, seated: Gregory Corso, Peter Orlovsky.

fuckyeahbeatgeneration:

BOMB
by Gregory Corso

(via dreambrothersoulsister)

(Source: solid-citizen)

I’m happy to see so much attention going to Gregory Corso and his acknowledgement of talented women in his era. For those interested, I’ve compiled a few thoughts (after the jump) on women in the Beat generation. The Beats have a pretty bad reputation regarding gender, a reputation I can understand, but I do hope as people learn more about this section of history, they realize that Jack Kerouac’s exclusion of female personalities in his work (and, according to Joyce Johnson, in his life) is not the end-all representation of Beat thoughts on women.

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