Putting Out the Fires With: Gasoline

Awesome video of Corso reading and teaching...

Also, be sure to spot Allen Ginsberg having a royal time joking about math.

Give this a listen while reading...

Title Track: David Bowie's 'Cat People (Putting Out Fires)

But enough technical fluff, let's dive into the meat. Gregory Corso is considered the youngest Beat poet to run in the inner circle of Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac. Born in 1930, Corso wrote at Harvard, and lived in Boston, New York City and Paris. He was through and through an East Coast beat; following closely in the footsteps of Allen Ginsberg and Kerouac's philosophies as well as writing techniques, the poetry of "Gasoline," Corso's 1958 collection published through City Lights is all over the place and reeks of Beatnik influence.

Ginsberg says in an introduction: "Open this book as you would a box of crazy toys, take in your hands a refinement of beauty out of a destructive atmosphere." What a fantastic way to introduce a book of poetry. As Ginsberg continues to outline, the Corso's poetry is filled with playfulness; he uses language in the same way a child would rummage through a toy box. Corso introduces his work a little differently: "It comes, I tell you, immense with gasolined rags and bits of wire and old bent nails, a dark arriviste, from a dark river within."

I see both of these appraisals, for lack of a better word, in the collection. Each poem in its own way playfully approaches some pretty dark topics, like the discontent that is often categorized in "post modern" poetry (as Corso often is). "The streetsinger is sick / crouched in the doorway, holding his heart / One less song in the noisy night," reads the first section of "Three." The poem offers sporadic, short on detail vignettes, concluding with "Death weeps because Death is human / spending all day in a movie when a child dies." While this poem is an experiment in form, it reflects on life and the nature of art; coming to the tragic conclusion that part of humanity is it ending. It burns with satire and dark comedy like fire, and whimsically plays with images.

Corso typifies Beat poetry in one way: it is a unique play on a known standard and format. He uses all kinds of dark images and topics to navigate life honestly, brutally sometimes, but it burns with honesty. He sometimes is using fragments, like Kerouac, other times using long lines, narrative like Ginsberg, and all of the time, Corso is making these styles his own. If the Beatnik movement was all about making one's own out of the mess of the times, and creating something beautiful that one can own, and label, and put their name on it, Corso succeeded at making a style of poetic writing.

"Gasoline" is a brilliant collection, a keystone in the City Lights pocket series, and an important vision of the Beat movement.

And, a final thought, Allen's too: "He's probably the greatest poet in America, and he's starving in Europe."