Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 17:59:20 -0500
From: Robert Creeley
Subject: Gregory Corso
Gregory Corso died last night (January 17), happily in his sleep in
Minnesota. He had been ill for much of the past year but had recovered from
time to time, saying that he'd got to the classic river but lacked the coin
for Charon to carry him over. So he just dipped his toes in the water.
In this time his daughter Sherry, a nurse, had been a godsend to him,
securing him, steadying the ambiance, just minding the store with great love
and clarity. He thought she should get Nurse of the Year recognition at the
very least.
There's no simple generalization to make of Gregory's life or poetry. There
are all too many ways to displace the extraordinary presence and authority
he was fact of. Last time we talked, he made the useful point that only a
poet could say he or she was a poet -- only they knew. Whereas a
philosopher, for instance, needed some other to say that that was what he or
she was -- un(e) philosophe! -- poets themselves had to recognize and
initiate their own condition.
There are several quick websites that help recall him now. One gives a
brief biography and discussion of a few of his poems:
http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/corso/corso.htm
Another, more usefully affectionate, is taken from Ed Sanders' The Woodstock
Journal. It was Lawrence Ferlinghetti who had suggested last summer that a
spate of respects might help cheer Gregory in his illness -- and that they
were certainly well merited:
http://www.woodstockjournal.com/corso.html
A third, which includes some previously noted, is The Museum of American
Poetics. There's a 'streamable' video available there of Gregory reading at
Naropa , if you can get the sound clearly:
http://www.poetspath.com/corso.html
Lots of us propose to be poets but who finally stakes all, or just takes
all, as being that way? In my life time only Robert Duncan could be his
equal in this way. It was honor indeed to have had his company.
RC, Buffalo, January 18, 2001
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