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   Gasoline » Read Now

   by Gregory Corso. 50 pgs.

   Collections: Literature, Entire Library
   
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   A Clown in a Grave: Complexities and Tensions in the Works of Gregory Corso » Read Now

   by Michael Skau. 233 pgs.

   Collections: Literature, Entire Library

   Using a number of critical approaches, Michael Skau examines Gregory Corso's complex imagination, his humor, and his poetic techniques in dealing with America, the Beat generation, and death.

   Skau covers the complete works of Corso, one of the four major Beat Generation writers (with Jack Kerouac...

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   Using a number of critical approaches, Michael Skau examines Gregory Corso's complex imagination, his humor, and his poetic techniques in dealing with America, the Beat generation, and death.

   Skau covers the complete works of Corso, one of the four major Beat Generation writers (with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs) who attempted to provide an alternative to what they saw as the academic forms of literature dominating American writing through the 1940s and 1950s. The Beat option focused on ordinary people, spurning the cultural pretensions of the intelligentsia and using common language as well as the rhythms of actual speech. Corso, abandoned as a child by his mother, subjected to a variety of foster homes, and imprisoned as an adolescent, became an authentic voice of America's neglected streetwise youth. He embodies much of the tension, confusion, and rebellion that emerged in America after World War II and eventually crested in the 1960s.

   Corso effectively articulates the complex feelings of the Beat Generation. In an age that prizes scientific, rational thought, Corso celebrates erratic, surreal, irrational behavior, preferring feeling to thought. Raised Catholic, he retains vestiges of his rejected religious training. Recognizing the advantages of democracy, he laments America's failure to live up to its ideals. A major Beat Generation writer, he nonetheless criticizes the directions, goals, and motives of that group, especially in his novel, The American Express.

   Corso emphasizes social issues, yet risks undermining this significance by using wit, wordplay, and humor. While conceding mortality, he is adamant in refusing to acknowledge death's power.Even as he rebels against conventional literature, he still is enchanted by classicism and romanticism, often borrowing their techniques and idioms. Skau examines these complexities and seeming contradictions throughout Corso'

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   Gregory Corso: Doubting Thomist » Read Now

   by Kirby Olson. 185 pgs.

   Collections: Religious Studies, Literature, Entire Library
   
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   Poets on Poetry ("Some of My Beginning ... and What I Feel Right Now" by Gregory Corso begins on p. 172) » Read Now

   by Howard Nemerov. 250 pgs.

   Collections: Literature, Entire Library
   
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   The Daybreak Boys: Essays on the Literature of the Beat Generation (Chap. 5 "The Arcadian Map: Notes on the Poetry of Gregory Corso") » Read Now

   by Gregory Stephenson. 218 pgs.

   Collections: Literature, Entire Library
   
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   Whitman's Wild Children: Portraits of Twelve Poets ("Revolutionary of the Spirit: Gregory Corso" begins on p. 225) » Read Now

   by Byneeli Cherkovski. 325 pgs.

   Collections: Literature, Entire Library

   IN WHITMAN'S WILD CHILDREN, Neelie Cherkovski looks at eleven contemporary beat poets - Michael McClure, Charles Bukowski, John Wieners, James Broughton, Philip Lamantia, Bob Kaufman, Allen Ginsberg, William Everson, Gregory Corso, Harold Norse, & Lawrence Ferlinghetti - chosen because each, like...

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   IN WHITMAN'S WILD CHILDREN, Neelie Cherkovski looks at eleven contemporary beat poets - Michael McClure, Charles Bukowski, John Wieners, James Broughton, Philip Lamantia, Bob Kaufman, Allen Ginsberg, William Everson, Gregory Corso, Harold Norse, & Lawrence Ferlinghetti - chosen because each, like Whitman, has taken "his own road" & had little to do with what was thought acceptable in mainstream American culture during the 1940's & 1950's. "When Whitman wrote 'Song of Myself,'" Cherkovski asserts in his introduction, "he stepped off the map & faced the unknown, absolutely alone. He shook off preconceptions of form & content & allowed intuition to lead him forward." As in his highly acclaimed biography Bukowski: A Life - "... a book for those who want to know how a poet is made. It is sympathetic, scholarly, grindingly real, & excellently written." (The Kansas City Star) - Cherkovski draws on personal encounters & his own reactions to individual poems in order to create biographical portraits that are at once enlightening & full of life. The result is an intimate critical memoir, written to reflect the spirit of Whitman's call for "perfect personal candor," about eleven poets who most influenced Cherkovski's own writing & also defined contemporary American literature.

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