The Happy Birthday of Death by Gregory Corso

“If you believe you’re a poet you’re saved.” - Gregory Corso

Gregory Corso has been much publicised as one of the leading literary spokesmen for the 'Beat Generation.' Alongside Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs.

It is true that he was one of the inner circle of the 'beats' from the first, but many admirers of his poetry feel that it belongs quite as much to other and older traditions in world literature.

One of these is the revival of pure poetry whenever an original - be it Whitman or Rimbaud - has broken with the current verse conventions, of their time, to give free rain to the magic of language.

Another is that ancient preoccupation of poets, the sense of the immediacy of death. Like Villon or Dylan Thomas, Corso lives close to the mystery of death. It is, perhaps, his central theme, on which variations ranging from the terrible to the comic are sounded.

This copy is a beautiful little New Directions Paperback. New Directions, was and is a publishing house with similar roots as Grove Press. An independent book publishers who were established in 1939 and based out of New York City. Started by James Laughlin after he was advised by Ezra Pound to "do something useful". 

Cover design by Rudolph de Harak

Photograph of Gregory Corso by Howard Smith

Paperback / Softcover

A New Directions Paperback

Published by New Directions, Ninth Printing