Gregory Nunzio Corso (born in 1930) was an American poet of Italian descent. Corso spent the majority of his childhood in foster homes and orphanages as well as two traumatic stays in prison during which he first began to write and developed an interest in reading literature. His first poetry was published in 1954 after Corso came in close and regular contact with several contemporary poets in New York and Boston. He died in 2001.
Corso’s works are characterized by an inherently authentic rhythm, which many have likened to music. Corso himself has said that he finds the rhythm for his poems in their natural enunciation.
He was a prominent member of the Beat Generation, a movement of young writers in the United States of the 1960s that sought to distance themselves from traditional conventions and included formerly taboo topics such as explicit references to sex or drugs.
The poem Marriage was published in 1960 and is a prime example of Corso’s preference to write poetry in its authentic rhythm of speech as the poem has no set meter or rhyme scheme and its lines vary greatly in length. Marriage is among Corso’s most famous ‘concept’ poems – poems that discuss a larger concept through largely unstructured, witty flows of inner dialogue.
There exists a photograph, taken by Corso’s long-time friend and fellow poet Allen Ginsberg, in 1959 with Corso, his girlfriend and their new-born baby at their home. A similar picture is painted in the later lines of the poem Marriage and thus many attribute to it certain autobiographical features.
