Just Kids illustrated by Patti Smith

Author:Patti Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781526614995
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2019-03-06T16:00:00+00:00

Gregory Corso could enter a room and commit instant mayhem, but he was easy to forgive because he had the equal potential to commit great beauty.

Perhaps Peggy introduced me to Gregory, for the two of them were close. I took a great liking to him, to say nothing that I felt he was one of our greatest poets. My worn copy of his The Happy Birthday of Death lived on my night table. Gregory was the youngest of the beat poets. He had a ravaged handsomeness and a John Garfield swagger. He did not always take himself seriously, but he was dead serious about his poetry.

Gregory loved Keats and Shelley and would stagger into the lobby with his trousers hanging low, eloquently spewing their verses. When I mourned my inability to finish any of my poems, he quoted Paul Valéry to me: “Poets don’t finish poems, they abandon them,” and then added, “Don’t worry, you’ll do okay, kid.”

I’d say, “How do you know?”

And he’d reply, “Because I know.”

Gregory took me to the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, which was a poets’ collective at the historic church on East Tenth Street. When we went to listen to the poets read, Gregory would heckle them, punctuating the mundane with cries of Shit! Shit! No blood! Get a transfusion!

In watching his reaction, I made a mental note to make certain I was never boring if I read my own poems one day.

Gregory made lists of books for me to read, told me the best dictionary to own, encouraged and challenged me. Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs were all my teachers, each one passing through the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel, my new university.

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