SOURCE: “‘The Arcadian Map’: Notes on the Poetry of Gregory Corso,” in The Daybreak Boys: Essays on the Literature of the Beat Generation, Southern Illinois University Press, 1990, pp. 74–89.

In the following excerpt, Stephenson investigates Corso's “poetic vision,” contending that the poet rejects reality in favor of the possibilities of imagination.

                                        the Arcadian map our only anthem'd direction 

Gregory Corso, “Ode to Sura”

The songs of one who strove to play the broken flutes of Arcady. 

Edwin Arlington Robinson, “Ballade of Broken Flutes”

“I contradict the real with the unreal,” declares Gregory Corso in his poem “Power,” and some lines farther in the same poem, he announces, “I am the ambassador of Power.”¹ Correctly understood, these two short statements represent a concise formulation of Corso's poetics and of his conception of the role of the poet, and of poetry, in human society and in the universe. In the following...