Gregory Corso

Bio

(1930-2001) Poet. Gregory Corso was born on Bleecker Street in New York City. Corso spent much of the first thirteen years of his life in orphanages, foster homes, and reform schools around New York City. He lived for a few years of his early life at 190 Clinton Street, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York. Later he lived at Avenue C and 5th Street, and also at the Hotel Chelsea. When he was sixteen (according to anecdotal testimony), Corso and two accomplices, utilizing nothing more than walkie-talkies obtained from an army-navy surplus store, masterminded the robbery of a Household Finance office for $21,000. He was caught and sent to Clinton State Prison in Dannemora, New York, where he spent three years, reading dictionaries, the poetry of Shelley, Dostoyevsky, Stendhal, Thomas Chatterton, Christopher Marlow and other books. When he was released in 1950, he met Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and other assorted Beats. He taught at SUNY Buffalo until 1965, when he was bagged for refusing to sign a loyalty oath.