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Gregory Corso

Gregory Corso was born on March 26, 1930 in Greenwich Village. At sixteen, he was sent to prison for robbery. At twenty, he met Allen Ginsberg at the Greenwich Village Bar. Ginsberg had been impressed by the poetry Corso had sent him from jail. Ginsberg had written to others about Corso's talent, and his first poems were published in 1955.

He went on to become one of the most widely-known and widely-read Beat poets. His sense of humor was very evident in his works, a refreshing diversion from the seriousness of many other Beat poets. An example is one of his best-known poems, "marriage." In the poem he debates with himself on whether or not he should get married, and the biggest problems he finds is in the honeymoon. He says ge'd be tempted not to do anything on the honeymoon night, since everyone would know and joke about what he would be doing. He once wrote a love-poem to atomic weapons, "Bomb", in the shape of a mushroom cloud.

Corso appears as the character Yuri Gregorovic in Jack Kerouac's novel The Subterraneans. He is the poet who steals the narrator's girlfriend.


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