Corso, Gregory

The Vestal Lady on Brattle and Other Poems

San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 1969. First Edition Thus (Facsimile). Softcover. Signed by Gregory Corso. "Corso's attitudes and subject matter range in apparently helter skelter fashion throughout these pages. But the potpourri may nonetheless indicate to the reader that Corso's overall vision is a fundamentally organic one, a vision having deeply instinctive sources of vitality. His images, many of them recurring over and over again, have an irrepressible way of stamping these poems as Corso's, not "some young poet's", and the total unity thereby derived is one which many more consciously inventive poets never achieve” (from Introduction). “Within a delicate grey ruin / the vestal lady on Brattle / is up at dawn, as is her custom, with the raise of a shade. / Swan-boned slippers revamp her aging feet; / she glides within an outer room… / pours old milk for an old cat.” Those are the opening stanzas of Gregory Corso’s “Vestal Lady on Brattle,” the great Beat giant’s poetic debut. Shortly after Corso (1930-2001) arrived in Cambridge, MA in 1954, he endeavored on a program of wide, voracious reading. Corso underwent edifying transformation after edifying transformation inside Harvard's Widener Library. Epiphanies leapt like vaulting frogs off the page and into his skull: this was the education he really wanted — of a quality beyond what the street can give. Epiphanies leapt like vaulting frogs off the page and into his skull: and he left Cambridge a changed man. While in the process of changing, however, he wrote (and wrote prolifically); these poems, as Corso takes pains to note in the front matter of this book, were “WRITTEN IN CAMBRIDGE, MASS. / 1954-1955.” This is what makes The Vestal Lady on Brattle so unique: it’s more of a poetic thumbprint than a finished product; it’s the poet “arriving,” —which is very different than work evincing that a poet “has arrived.” Despite this, there are moments (such as the excerpt quoted above) where the poet appears mature and ready for the limelight, more or less — and those moments are present here, as they are in all such works. The result is an underread, misunderstood volume that deserves a better look: its gems award the curious. Softcover in stiff wrappers: First Edition Thus (the City Lights Books facsimile edition of 1969, per copyright page) (Cook, 75, pg. 81). The rarity and delightfulness of this copy is triply enhanced by the presence of a signature from the poet and literary-generational eminence on verso of front cover, at interior near upper left-hand corner of same. Corso's clean, buoyant signature, in thin black pen ink, reads: "Gregory Corso.” In strong fine condition with only minute-to-moderate shelf-wear, light bumping & variously enunciated exhibits of age-toning/yellowing to fine-edges & corners of front, back covers & spine-edge; slightly more enunciated rubbing, age-toning & yellowing to back cover (esp. along fine-edges, incl. a modestly more pronounced portion along rightmost fine-edge of same), otherwise clean. Fine. [Item #6532]

Price: $80.00