SOURCE: “Gregory Corso Dies at 70; A Candid-Voiced Beat Poet,” The New York Times, Vol. CL, No. 51,638, January 19, 2001, p. C-13.

In the following obituary, Horan recalls Corso's life and career.

Gregory Corso, a poet and leading member of the Beat literary movement that shook American social and political life in the late 1950's and 60's, died on Wednesday in Robbinsdale, Minn., where he lived with his daughter Sheri Langerman. He was 70.

The cause was prostate cancer, Ms. Langerman said.

To the literary world, Mr. Corso was considered less political than Allen Ginsberg, less charismatic than Jack Kerouac, but more shocking, at times, than either of them. In his book, The Beat Generation (Scribner, 1971), Bruce Cook calls Mr. Corso “the most avid nose-thumber of them all,” a man regarded as a nemesis by those who detested his “hip, easy, wiseguy manner and direct artless diction.”

A put-on specialist at poetry...