Gregory Corso and an Observation from Miss Emily D.

Years ago, I had the opportunity to attend Naropa University's Jack Kerouac Conference. This was really back in the day. A girlfriend and I volunteered to be "hostesses" at a private party and we wore little black dresses and walked around the party with trays of fancy hors d' oeuvres. There were so many people there. I remember William Burroughs sitting like a statue in a corner surrounded by adoring boys from some Boulder band. I remember talking to Ken Kesey in the kitchen, and that he helped us roll up slices of prosciutto and spear them with toothpicks. I remember shaking hands with the political activist Abbie Hoffman. I remember floating by Timothy Leary (he was not dead!) and, of course, Allen Ginsberg was there, as well. It's weird to think that all of those people are dead now. I have one favorite memory that I will share. As my girlfriend and I rounded a corner, headed to the kitchen to fill our trays again, we were blocked by an older gentleman who had his arm around a very pretty, much younger woman. The man turned out to be the poet Gregory Corso. Not many people remember him, but he wrote some good poems, like "Marriage," and "Bomb."  He was quite drunk when we saw him and he stopped dead in his tracks, looked us up and down and blurted out, "Look at this.. Jesus...Sorry girls, I can't fuck you tonight. My wife is here." Then he, too, floated away. 

Though we laughed, I felt ridiculous at that moment. We were like groupies! I felt ashamed. So, to prove to everyone, but most of all to myself, that I was a serious student of poetry, I signed up for a lecture series that Corso was giving. What an amazing person Corso was! He talked at length about how Emily Dickinson was a poet we should study and pay attention to. He didn't call her "Emily Dickinson," either. He called her, "Miss Emily D." It was as if he knew her personally, and he had just been conversing with her in the next room. Perhaps he had. Anyway, after my son's recent death, I have been searching for poems, and writing poems, as a way to "normalize" again. I think I may be fooling myself. But I did find the lovely poem below, "After Great Pain." I like to think that Corso and my son are together somewhere running around with Miss Emily D. My son Bryon had a similar "slant" sense of humor; he would have gotten a kick out of Corso. He also, like Corso, could be extremely insightful and perceptive about people, and I have found many poems he wrote, as well as really nice guitar lyrics. But the poem below resonates with me. There is a formalness to death that is inexplicable and distant. One is left only with shadows and dreams. And a "stiff Heart."

After great pain, a formal feeling comes –

The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –

The stiff Heart questions ‘was   it He, that bore,’

And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?

The Feet, mechanical, go round –

A Wooden way

Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –

Regardless grown,

A Quartz contentment, like a stone –

This is the Hour of Lead –

Remembered, if outlived,

As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –

First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –