Guest Blogger - Matt Hart

For someone like myself who’s long been a true believer in the immediacy and enduring contemporary relevance of Gregory Corso’s poetry, it’s difficult to believe that his 6th and final collection of poems, 1981’s Herald of the Autochthonic Spirit was published more than a quarter century ago, and Mindfield his New and Selected volume is twenty years old this year. In all this time little attention has been paid by scholars, and even Beat Generation enthusiasts, to solidifying Corso’s rightful place as a major American poet of the 20th Century. With few critical works, no official biography, and, most significantly, no Collected Poems in sight, one might surmise that Corso was, rather than the significant poet he is, a minor literary anomaly best left to the annals of various Beat anthologies and as a footnote to the careers of his more famous, more prolific peers, Ginsberg, Burroughs and Kerouac. On the contrary, I’d argue that Corso’s work merits as much and perhaps more attention than that which has been given to the other Beats.

So what gives? Why the scholarly cold shoulder?

Click here to continue reading.