Gregory Corso was one of the youngest members of the Beat Generation but is not so well-known as Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. This despite the fact that Ginsberg generously maintained that Corso was the better poet.
You can judge for yourself if he is right by listening to this fascinating collection of Corso’s final spoken word recordings which was originally released on CD in 2002 and is now available for the first time on vinyl.
Mark Kramer, the producer and proprietor of the Shimmy-Disc label, provides some subtle ambient accompaniment to complement the stark urgency of the works.
The shadow cast by ageing and death looms over many of the poems. For example, in For Homer, Corso intones: “We all in time die and laments of ”the futility of it all” before adding the mindful reminder that “there is only right here and now.
In a similar vein, the suffering poet complains in A Bed’s Lament of “shakey legs and sunken back. when once he was straight and strong.
An added sense of poignancy comes from the knowledge that the majority of the readings were recorded on January 6th, 2001, just days before Corso’s death on January 17th at the age of 70.
The collection includes three pieces recited by Marianne Faithfull: No Arrangement Was Made, As Rome Burned and Getting To The Poem. Her refined English voice gives these poems a gentler and more humorous tone in contrast with Corso’s gritty rages against the dying of the light.
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The highlight of the album is Bomb, a fierce poem that was first published in the shape of a H-bomb cloud. This is Corso’s definitive nine minute chant- rant recorded in February 1959, a Howl-like treatise targeting the menace of the masters of war and the destructiveness of bombs. It includes name-checks to Goldilocks, Boris Karloff, Oppenheimer and Einstein.
A lighter piece - Hair -, also recorded in 1959, follows on from a conversation with Studs Terkel, Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky and imagines the trauma of becoming bald.
The record also features a 1975 reading by Corso of Shelley’s Ode to The West Wind.
If you’re seeking a concise introduction and celebration of Corso’s life, this intelligently sequenced album is unbeatable.
Full album info at Shimmy-Disc’s website
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