About this project

The Whole Shot: Collected Interviews With Gregory Corso is scheduled for publication in 2011. It will be the first time that several interviews with the late Beat poet will be available in one printed volume. Similar works have been published for the other three members of the "inner circle" of Beat writers: Empty Phantoms: Interviews and Encounters with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg: Spontaneous Mind: Selected Interviews, 1958-1996, and Burroughs Live: The Collected Interviews of William S. Burroughs, 1960-1997.

To date, we have received permission to reprint the following lengthy out-of-print interviews:

• "Interview with Gregory Corso" by Michael Andre, Unmuzzled Ox (1973)

• "I'm Poor Simple Human Bones: An Interview with Gregory Corso" by Robert King, The Beat Diary (1977)

• The Riverside Interviews 3: Gregory Corso by Gavin Selerie (1982)

Additionally, the collection will also include the following shorter, though no less significant, interviews:

• "Humor the Butcher: Interview with Gregory Corso" by Victor Brockis, The Drummer (1973)

• "Interview with Gregory Corso" by Douglas Calhoun, Athanor (1973)

• "Poetry Power for a Bloodless Coup: An Interview with Gregory Corso" by Tom Plante, The Berkeley Barb (1977)

• Transcript of Corso's appearances in the documentary film What Happened to Kerouac? by Richard Lerner and Lewis MacAdams (1986)

• "Radio Interview With Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg" by Liza Richardson, KCRW 89.9 FM (1994)

Just added:

"Discussion Following Poetry Reading, April 1973, Salem State College," Gone Soft, Vol. 1, No. 3 (1974), a panel discussion during the Kerouac Symposium featuring Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, and Gregory Corso

This list will expand as we have identified a number of other interviews and are currently in the process of tracking down the copyright holders and securing the rights to reprint them. We aim to make this collection as comprehensive as possible.

The book will be published as a perfect-bound 5.5" x 8.5" paperback. With numerous annotations, we anticipate that it will easily exceed 200 pages.

The book cover will feature a 1986 photo of the poet by legendary photographer Hank O'Neal.

We are hoping to raise funds through Kickstarter to help defray the licensing, production, and printing costs for the limited first edition of 1,000 copies.

About Gregory Corso

Gregory Corso (1930 - 2001) was an American poet, the youngest and arguably most colorful of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers that also included Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. His writing could be described as a mixture of Surrealism, classic Romantic poetic syntax and spelling, and hipster street jargon.

Born to teenage immigrant parents, Corso spent most of his youth in foster homes and his teenage years in and out of prison for a series of petty crimes. At seventeen, he was sentenced to three years in New York's Clinton Correctional Facility where he educated himself in the prison library, studying rhetoric, Greek and Roman classics, and reading the entire 1902 Standard Dictionary. It was also there that he wrote his first poetry.

Shortly after his release in 1951, he met poet Allen Ginsberg in a New York City bar which led to introductions to, and friendships with, Kerouac and Burroughs whom Ginsberg had known since his days at Columbia University in the early 1940s.

Corso's first collection of poetry, The Vestal Lady on Brattle and Other Poems, was published in 1955 while he was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and auditing classes at Harvard University. The publishing expenses were underwritten by friends from Harvard and Radcliffe. This was followed in 1958 by Gasoline, published by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Books.

His first collection for New Directions Books, The Happy Birthday of Death (1960), contains many of his most popular poems including "Bomb," "Hair," "Power," and "Marriage." This was followed by Long Live Man (1962), Elegiac Feelings American (1970), and Herald of the Autochthonic Spirit (1981). He also published one novel, The American Express, in 1961. Other poetry, short plays, and drawings by Corso appeared in several literary magazines throughout his career.

What You'll Get for Your Support

PLEDGE $5 OR MORE

• One 4" x 6" postcard featuring the Gregory Corso photo used on the book's cover
• Your name listed on the Vox Redux Press website as a supporter

PLEDGE $15 OR MORE

• One copy of the published book
• One 4" x 6" postcard featuring the Gregory Corso photo used on the book's cover
• Your name listed on the Vox Redux Press website as a supporter

PLEDGE $25 OR MORE

• One copy of the published book personally inscribed by the editor
• One 4" x 6" postcard featuring the Gregory Corso photo used on the book's cover
• Your name included in the acknowledgments section of the book
• Your name listed on the Vox Redux Press website as a supporter

PLEDGE $50 OR MORE

• One copy of the published book personally inscribed by the editor
• One limited edition set of 5 different 4" x 6" Gregory Corso postcards by photographer Hank O'Neal
• Your name included in the acknowledgments section of the book
• Your name listed on the Vox Redux Press website as a supporter

PLEDGE $75 OR MORE

• One copy of the published book personally inscribed by the editor
• One limited edition Penguin Dust* T-shirt
• One 6" x 8.75" photo print of the Gregory Corso photo used on book's cover
• One limited edition set of 5 different 4" x 6" Gregory Corso postcards by photographer Hank O'Neal
• Your name included in the acknowledgments section of the book
• Your name listed on the Vox Redux Press website as a supporter

PLEDGE $100 OR MORE

• One copy of the published book personally inscribed by the editor
• One limited edition Penguin Dust* T-shirt
• One 6" x 8.75" photo print of the Gregory Corso photo used on book's cover signed by the photographer
• One limited edition set of 5 different 4" x 6" Gregory Corso postcards by photographer Hank O'Neal
• Your name included in the acknowledgments section of the book
• Your name listed on the Vox Redux Press website as a supporter

*Penguin Dust?

Easily Corso's most famous poem, "Marriage," from The Happy Birthday of Death (New Directions, 1960), is a hilarious and touching expression of his thoughts on the institution, specifically the conflicts inherent in compromising the poetic spirit for middle-class domesticity. It contains the following lines:

And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle                             Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust —

voxredux.com

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