Gregory Corso papers, 1949-1996

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Series III: Writings, 1949-1996, Undated

The writings series, the largest in the collection, is primarily comprised of poetry, with some prose writing. The items in this series are listed individually by title, if supplied, or by the first line of the poem. Also included in this series are a number of notebooks containing poems, poetry fragments, notes, and sketches.


General Writings and Documents



Box 2 Folder 19 Committee on Poetry's Statement on LeRoi Jones' Trial, 1968 January 6


Box 2 Folder 20 Contemporary Poets of the English Language Questionnaire, 1968


Box 2 Folder 21 Corso's Statement about his Refusal to Sign a Loyalty Oath, 1969

(with copy of oath)


Box 2 Folder 22 Ginsberg, Allen-- "The Old Man Sings at His White Hair" and Corso-- "Snaked Arms and Bleeding Legs"


Box 2 Folder 23 Marcel Proust Questionnaire-- filled out by Corso, 1967 April 9


Box 2 Folder 24 Questionnaire for Doubleday & Co., undated


Box 2 Folder 25 Syndicate Plan, undated


Poems-- by Corso


Box 2 Folder 26 "10 Times a Poem,", December, 1967

(limited edition collection of poetry)


Box 2 Folder 57 "1964 Thoughts on God"

(multiple drafts)


Box 2 Folder 28 "Academically Speaking"


Box 2 Folder 29 "Agents are cleaning their pistols…"


Box 2 Folder 30 "Ahead… 50 miles ahead…"


Box 2 Folder 31 "All Hallows Eve in Cleveland"


Box 2 Folder 32 "Ah but I feel I know O so and…"


Box 2 Folder 33 "An Eversion of Mischance"


Box 2 Folder 34 'The Anarchiad"


Box 2 Folder 35 "And as expanded nine billion celled brain…"


Box 2 Folder 36 "And she droned such silences…"


Box 2 Folder 37 "And when 12 belled no one happied…"


Box 2 Folder 38 "The Angel of Old"


Box 2 Folder 39 "Army"


Box 2 Folder 40 "Augments"


[Autobiography]


Box 2 Folder 41 Draft Fragments


Box 2 Folder 42 Corrected Proof


Box 2 Folder 43 "Away One Year"


Box 2 Folder 44 "Back to Space"


Box 2 Folder 45 "Battersea Power House"


Box 2 Folder 46 "Between star and quasar wheeling swiftly…"


Box 2 Folder 47 "Between two points I span…"


Box 2 Folder 48 "Birthday Poem,", 1973 March 26


Box 2 Folder 49 "Bomb"

(multiple drafts-- including first draft and multiple variant page layouts)


Box 2 Folder 50 "Burn your convention young child…"


Box 2 Folder 51 "The businessman in all his dignity…"


Box 2 Folder 52 "But I Do Not Need Kindness!"


Box 2 Folder 53 "In Honor of Those the Negroes are Revolting Against"


Box 2 Folder 54 "Church on the Guidecca, Venice"


Box 2 Folder 55 "Circ the circle full- the wooden sun…"


Box 2 Folder 56 "Colleges of the 60's, you are young America…"


Box 2 Folder 57 "Composite 2"


Box 2 Folder 58 "Continental Images"


Box 2 Folder 59 "Crashing down time…"


Box 2 Folder 60 "Dear Villon Dear Milarepa"


Box 2 Folder 61 "December"


Box 2 Folder 62 "Dedication Poem: For Hope, My Angel, My Sura, The Only Girl I Ever Loved"

(two drafts)


Box 2 Folder 63 "Dialogue"

(multiple drafts)


Box 2 Folder 64 "Dream of Dreams"


Box 2 Folder 65 "Doll Poem"



Box 3 Folder 1 'Early Morning Poetry"


Box 3 Folder 2 "Ecce Home"


Ecce Homo "Elegiac Feelings American"


Box 3 Folder 3 "Elegiac Feelings American-- for the Dear Memory of John Kerouac,", 1969

(original manuscript with corrections)


Box 3 Folder 4 Draft Material not Included in Final Poem, 1969


Box 3 Folder 5 Drafts-- titled "Gregorian Rants" and "Four"


Box 3 Folder 6 to 7 Draft titled "Spontaneous Requiem for an American, (2 Folders)


Box 3 Folder 8 Draft titled "Spontaneous Requiem for a Beautiful American"


Box 3 Folder 9 Ramparts Magazine March, 1970

(contains "Spontaneous Requiem" an early published version of "Elegiac Feelings American")


Box 3 Folder 10 "For Harry's Viva Budgie"


Box 3 Folder 11 "Encounter"

(multiple drafts)


Box 3 Folder 12 "The Eye is Cause of the Sight"


Box 3 Folder 13 "First Impression of Florence"


Box 3 Folder 14 "Flight"


Box 3 Folder 15 "Florida 6"


Box 3 Folder 16 "The Flower Peddler


Box 3 Folder 17 "For K.R. Who Killed Himself in Charles St. Jail,", 1957

(also includes draft titled "In Memory of K.R.")


Box 3 Folder 18 "For My Pregnant Wife, Be it Girl or Boy"


Box 3 Folder 19 "For the Love of Words- for Wm. Shakespeare's 400th Happy Birthday"

(multiple drafts including alternate title: For the Poet Who Had a Virgin Language")


Box 3 Folder 20 "Four years I have faced my brow's center…"


Box 3 Folder 21 "Fragment from Novel Prologue-2" and "Fragment from Novel Prologue-3"


Box 3 Folder 22 "From Hell…"


Box 3 Folder 23 "Further Reflections"


Box 3 Folder 24 "The genes of the spirit apparitionate…"


Box 3 Folder 25 "The God I knew to be…"


Box 3 Folder 26 "G.O.P. Convention"


Box 3 Folder 27 "The greatest discovery a man can make…"

(multiple drafts)


Box 3 Folder 28 "Heed me well, embryonic scout…"


Box 3 Folder 29 "Hello…"


Box 3 Folder 30 "High-heeled poverty…"


Box 3 Folder 31 "Hooooooooooo Like a Zoomy Slip of Gold I Go"


Box 3 Folder 32 "How fantastic the soft rocket's lift-off…"


Box 3 Folder 33 "How haunts us the buffaloes earthtight will…"


Box 3 Folder 34 "How so suddenly in a snap like wham…"


Box 3 Folder 35 "How sweetly fast…"


Box 3 Folder 36 "I am a drawn mouse…"

(with sketch of mouse)


Box 3 Folder 37 "I am no longer I…"


Box 3 Folder 38 "I am not together…"


Box 3 Folder 39 "I am not that I of face…"


Box 3 Folder 40 "I damned both the sword and victim…"


Box 3 Folder 41 "I do not know"


Box 3 Folder 42 "I Held a Shelley Manuscript,", 1955


Box 3 Folder 43 "I know all there is to know…"


Box 3 Folder 44 "I long for the time of great Cybele…"


Box 3 Folder 45 "I saw these years of life…"


Box 3 Folder 46 "I sit near my body sleeping…"


Box 3 Folder 47 "I would a tinkler of portents be…"


Box 3 Folder 48 "If a Hollywood star is not my ego…"


Box 3 Folder 49 "If you are earth…"


Box 3 Folder 50 "I'll my marble aeroplane…"


Box 3 Folder 51 "I'll remember earth…"


Box 3 Folder 52 "In a lurid clay vision…"


Box 3 Folder 53 "In Central Park"


Box 3 Folder 54 "In dreams of reality…"


Box 3 Folder 55 "In moving space moves time and change…"

(multiple drafts)


Box 3 Folder 56 "In the middle of the night negroes play…"


Box 3 Folder 57 "In solar camp exiled to a dead star…"


Box 3 Folder 58 "In time there are the elements solitary and undisturbed…"


Box 3 Folder 59 "Infinity meets itself…"


Box 3 Folder 60 "Instead of earth a more difficult planet…"


Box 3 Folder 61 "An instrument of the Muse I am not…"


Box 3 Folder 62 "It is snowing in the summer of my sleep…"


Box 3 Folder 63 "It was hell to come by…"


Box 3 Folder 64 "It wasn't when I lost God I lost life…"


Box 3 Folder 65 "It's getting late…"


Box 3 Folder 66 "It's not like some spy I am…"


Box 3 Folder 67 "The Lammergeyer"


Box 3 Folder 68 "Last Night I Drove a Car…"


Box 3 Folder 69 "Last night was night at its nightest…"


Box 3 Folder 70 "Let Us Inspect the Lyre"

(multiple drafts)


Box 3 Folder 71 "Like a snail leaving its shell…"

(multiple drafts)


Box 3 Folder 72 "Lines Written November 22, 23-1963-- In Discord--"

(multiple drafts)


Box 3 Folder 73 "Lived I in the first house…"


Box 3 Folder 74 Long Live Man (multiple drafts of various poems published in Long Live Man)



Box 4 Folder 1 "Lower East Side Puerto Rican Street"


Box 4 Folder 2 "The Mad Yak"


Box 4 Folder 3 "Mafia"


Box 4 Folder 4 "The Making of a Poem- At One Sitting"

(multiple drafts)


Box 4 Folder 5 "Many are the beginnings where legends…"


Box 4 Folder 6 ""Masks and Attainments- for Howard Kanovitz"


Box 4 Folder 7 "Men should wear antlers she said…"


Box 4 Folder 8 "Mind is centered on the cosmosian bar…"


Box 4 Folder 9 "Mind lulling…"


Box 4 Folder 10 "Mine galactic incestry O oaken ma…"


Mindfield circa, 1989


Box 4 Folder 11 Drafts, with manuscript annotations and corrections



Mapcase 14-E-6 Master Galleys

(corrected and annotated)



Box 4 Folder 12 to 14 Proofs, (3 Folders)


Box 4 Folder 15 "The Missing Link is the Birth of Spirit"


Box 4 Folder 16 [Music]-- prose



Mapcase 14-E-6 "Mutation of the Spirit: A Shuffle Poem Unshuffled"



Box 4 Folder 17 "Name Droppings"


Box 4 Folder 18 "Neither white-smocked in science…"


Box 4 Folder 19 "No Doubt What I saw,", 1957


Box 4 Folder 20 "No was not the Muse pinned me…"


Box 4 Folder 21 "None Dare Trust Another"


Box 4 Folder 22 "Not often have I hesitated to go beyond…"


Box 4 Folder 23 "Numbers of directions! Lighttime distances!..."


Box 4 Folder 24 "O boats O seas ye nights there…"


Box 4 Folder 25 "O life double me…"


Box 4 Folder 26 "O Mighty Tug"


Box 4 Folder 27 "O my guardian muse…"


Box 4 Folder 28 "O the beauty of all things! The beauty…"


Box 4 Folder 29 "Of Streets and Flowers"


Box 4 Folder 30 "Oh but to be received of wise and sweet…"


Box 4 Folder 31 "The old man of me and…"


Box 4 Folder 32 "On Food"


Box 4 Folder 33 "On Having Once Loved"


Box 4 Folder 34 "On Nearing My 29th Year,", 1959


Box 4 Folder 35 "On Poetry"

(multiple drafts)


Box 4 Folder 36 "On the Death of a Chilean Poet,", 1957


Box 4 Folder 37 "On the walls of a dull furnished room…"


Box 4 Folder 38 "On a street corner in ancient Cathy…"


Box 4 Folder 39 "1234567890…"


Box 4 Folder 40 "Out of fanciful disorder comes… disorder…"


Box 4 Folder 41 "People are afraid…"


Box 4 Folder 42 "Poem to Michelangelo"


Box 4 Folder 43 "Power"


Box 4 Folder 44 Prison Writings-- prose, 1949


Box 4 Folder 45 "A prophet walks twice during his tenure…"


Box 4 Folder 46 "A Rambling Poem on a Rambling Trip to Ohio"


Box 4 Folder 47 "Revenge the Hapless Nightmare"


Box 4 Folder 48 "The river runs but the riverbed is steadfast…"


Box 4 Folder 49 "Seated before a banquet of knowledge…"


Box 4 Folder 50 "Setting the Record of Absurdity Straight"


Box 4 Folder 51 "She says flying saucers and is no…"


Box 4 Folder 52 "She of the days of my heart…"


Box 4 Folder 53 "Space is a journey long ago taken…"


Box 4 Folder 54 "The Spell of Wlamtrice Park"


Box 4 Folder 55 "Spooning opiate the lower visibilities…"


Box 4 Folder 56 "Spring's Melodious Herald"

(early draft entitled "Cythylis")


Box 4 Folder 57 "Still Life"


Box 4 Folder 58 "Suburbia Mad Song"


Box 4 Folder 59 Sweet Jesus, swollen on my lips, I speak thy pain…"


Box 4 Folder 60 "The swimming lights in the black are bright pieces of air…"


Box 4 Folder 61 "The Tarot Poems"



Box 5 Folder 1 "Ten thousand million years ago the cosmos was a year old…"


Box 5 Folder 2 "There became so many of us…"


Box 5 Folder 3 "There is nothing missing…"


Box 5 Folder 4 "There is yet time…"

(multiple drafts)


Box 5 Folder 5 'These truncated troops of palsied geometrics…"


Box 5 Folder 6 "This poem is the mind flow of a damned…"


Box 5 Folder 7 "Thoughts in an Airplane"


Box 5 Folder 8 "Thus when by all great trismegatusian light…"


Box 5 Folder 9 "To be…"


Box 5 Folder 10 "To Bring Back the Dead"


Box 5 Folder 11 "To express a sorrow deep within…"


Box 5 Folder 12 "To hear quasars echo light's first cry…"


Box 5 Folder 13 "To return to my feeling-head…"


Box 5 Folder 14 "The truth about myself…"


Box 5 Folder 15 "Two stars etched on Calabrian stone…"


Box 5 Folder 16 "Unseen journeying in the nuances…"


Box 5 Folder 17 'The violet-white-blackgreen sky…"


Box 5 Folder 18 [Vision of Rotterdam]


Box 5 Folder 19 "What angel shall sharpen its white on this…"


Box 5 Folder 20 "What I was before I returned the antlers to the stag…"


Box 5 Folder 21 "What separates me from you…"


Box 5 Folder 22 "What to the senses seem…"


Box 5 Folder 23 "What wonderful men…and women…"


Box 5 Folder 24 "When I came upon the mystery's source…"


Box 5 Folder 25 "When I Think to Refrain"


Box 5 Folder 26 "When sweet terror thrills…"


Box 5 Folder 27 "Where by god the time comes to stop…"


Box 5 Folder 28 "Who sees the wind sees…"


Box 5 Folder 29 "Who'll believe what I have seen…"


Box 5 Folder 30 "Who unto themselves are none other…"


Box 5 Folder 31 "Wisdom it was made me so happy…"


Box 5 Folder 32 "With oaken ears…"


Box 5 Folder 33 "Woman Seated in Park"


Box 5 Folder 34 "Written While Watching Lenny Bruce Obscenity Trial"


Box 5 Folder 35 "Yesterday where I live…"


Box 5 Folder 36 "You know my present…"


Box 5 Folder 37 "You too shall be known…"


Miscellaneous Poems


Box 5 Folder 38 Drafts and Notes- General


Notebooks


Box 5 Folder 39 Paris, 1965


Box 5 Folder 40 Athens, 1966 February-March


Box 5 Folder 41 to 4 San Francisco, 1968, (3 Folders)



Box 6 Folder 1 San Francisco, 1968 February


Box 6 Folder 2 San Francisco, 1969


Box 6 Folder 3 to 4 San Francisco, February, 1969, (2 Folders)


Box 6 Folder 5 San Francisco, May, 1969


Box 6 Folder 6 Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1972


Box 6 Folder 7 1986-1992


Box 6 Folder 8 to 11 Undated, (4 Folders)


Poems-- by Others


Box 6 Folder 12 Heliczer, Piero--The Soap Opera circa, 1966

(copy, with manuscript corrections)


Box 6 Folder 13 Hollander, John-- "Another for Gregory,", undated


Box 6 Folder 14 Olsen, Charles-- "A Maximus Written to Answer Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso,", undated


Box 6 Folder 15 Schenck, Stephen-- "Sweety-bar in time and space…,", undated

(carbon copy with corrections)