Open this book as you would a box of crazy toys, take in
your hands a refinement of beauty out of a destructive at-
mosphere. These combinations are imaginary and pure, in
accordance with Corso's individual (therefore universal)
DESIRE.

All his own originality! What's his connection, but his
own beauty? Such weird haiku-like juxtapositions aren't in
the American book. Ah! but the real classic tradition--from
Aristotle's description of metaphor to the wildness of his
Shelley--and Apollinaire, Lorca, Myakovsky. Corso is a great
word-slinger, first naked sign of a poet, a scientific master
of mad mouthfuls of language. He wants a surface hilarious
with ellipses, jumps of the strangest phrasing picked off the
streets of his mind like "mad children of soda caps."

This is his great sound: "O drop that fire engine out of
your mouth!"

Crazier: "Dirty Ears aims a knife at me, I pump him full
of lost watches."

What nerve! "You, Mexico, you have no Chicago, no
white-blonde moll." ("H. G. Wells," unpublished.)

He gets pure abstract poetry, the inside sound of language
alone.

But what is he saying? Who cares?! It's said! "Outside by
a Halloween fire, wise on a charred log, an old man is
dictating to the heir of the Goon."

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