SOURCE: “An Urchin Shelley,” in The Beat Generation, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971, pp. 133–49.

In the excerpt below, Cook provides an overview of Corso's career, stating that the quality of his work has been uneven.

Time takes me by the hand born March 26 1930 I am 100 mph o'er the vast market                     of choice what to choose? what to choose? 

For Gregory Corso, the simple act of choosing has always provided profound difficulties. It is a theme that runs through his poetry—decision-making or, alternatively, refusing to decide—and it can be read even more plainly in the record of his life. Corso is that young man described by John Dos Passos in the prologue to U.S.A. who “walks by himself, fast but not fast enough, far but not far enough … he must catch the last subway, the streetcar, the bus, run up the gangplanks of all the steamboats, register...