Gregory Corso, ‘gangster’ godfather

Corso, 1982. Photo by Gerald Nicosia. Used w/permission.

I never met “The Fourth Daddy”¹ of the Beat literary movement, Gregory Corso (1930-2001), but by most accounts the often-inebriated mercurial poet was at times a hard —if not impossible—guy to be around.

But I have met and admire Gerald Nicosia, author of the outstanding Jack Kerouac biography Memory Babe who knew Corso well. In Gregory Corso: Ten Times a Poet, Nicosia writes, “Gregory was scary. He was fast-talking with an even faster mind and came on like an Italian gangster. Even the tough young studs were wary of him.”

Hmmm. Doesn’t quite sound like the kind of guy I would ask to be godfather to one of my children.²

And yet, the Finnish-born poet and translator Anselm Hollo and poet Josephine Clare, did exactly that.

In the mid-1960s they asked Corso to be godfather to their second-born child, daughter Kaarina.

Kaarina, writing in Ten Times a Poet shared how her father described the baptism. A sampling of his memory:

“Gregory performed his duties as godfather impeccably.”

“At the time, GC was literally the only Catholic we knew.”

“… and I remember him giving the priest a tip the size of which made the fellow’s eye bulge.”

And beyond that day? Kaarenia writes, “As a godfather, Gregory was more of an imagined and inspirational presence rather than a material one … I remember receiving a card from him as a teenager, and my copy of Mindfield is inscribed: ‘To my goddaughter/Gregory Corso/1994.’ I was immensely proud of having him as my godfather and read and reread his poems many times.”

Kaarina, who today is a translator and scholar of Irish literature, concludes,

“What do I have of or from him, as a godchild? Well, wherever it comes from I have a lifelong relationship with Catholicism, a love for St. Francis and of poetry, and the knowledge that the world is eternally strange and wonderful, as are the words we use to try to express what we see in our spyings. I’d say that’s more than enough.”

The reference to St. Francis is interesting, as later in life, Corso took to wearing a cross which he claimed contained a relic, “dust” as he called it, of St. Francis of Assisi.

Regarding Corso’s art, author and poet Westley Heine wrote of the Beats, “It’s important to judge art by the work itself and not the life of the artist, which inevitably has its warts. Human beings are imperfect. The art they leave behind approaches grace.”

Corso was often under the influence of drugs and alcohol, rarely sober, but according to Kirby Olson, author of Gregory Corso: Doubting Thomist, “He wrote only when he was completely sober ... So, when we’re reading Corso we’re reading the sane and quiet man, not the public drunk.” In other words, we’re not reading the gangster, we’re reading the godfather.

1. The other three being Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs.

2. CCC 1255 For the grace of Baptism to unfold, the parents' help is important. So too is the role of the godfather and godmother, who must be firm believers, able and ready to help the newly baptized - child or adult on the road of Christian life. Their task is a truly ecclesial function (officium). The whole ecclesial community bears some responsibility for the development and safeguarding of the grace given at Baptism.