Beat Poet Gregory Corso Lives On In New Vinyl Release ‘Die On Me’
The ‘50s Beat Generation preceded ‘60s hippies. Poets Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Newark’s Allen Ginsberg, Herbert Huncke, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder and Gregory Corso are all dead now but they planted the seeds for what became the hippie generation. Corso was the youngest. Abandoned by his mother during the Great Depression, he reunited with her late in life in Trenton.
Bergen County iconoclast Kramer founded Shimmy-Disc Records in 1987. He’s since moved out-of-state but his label has now released the last utterings of poetry by Corso, Die On Me, with Ginsberg, British singer Marianne Faithfull and Chicago writer Studs Turkel. Originally released in 2002, it has now been made available for the first time on vinyl. The archival recordings span the years 1959 to 2001, the final gasps of the ailing Corso recorded just days before he died. Corso knew he was dying. It was his wish to be cremated, his ashes buried in Rome—birthplace of his mom—next to two other great poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley [1792-1822] and John Keats [1795-1821]. Ginsberg once said, “people say that I’m the greatest American poet of the 20th Century. I tell them they’re wrong. Gregory Corso is a far greater poet.”