Gregory Corso

Corso was a flawed Beat-scene star, a heavy heroin habit reducing his later output. Ginsberg, met in in Greenwich Village, introduced him to Burroughs and Kerouac, and travelled with him across the US, then to Mexico, North Africa and Paris (where Genet upbraided him for painting on his landlord’s walls). He hung out with de Kooning in Rome, and with Ferlinghetti, McClure, Snyder and Duncan in San Francisco. Auden showed Ginsberg and him around Oxford. He made a pilgrimage to visit Williams, helped Kerouac give Pollock a drunken beating, was head-butted by Olson, and regretted lending Rexroth his copy of Shelley.