Long Live Man [Paperback]

Gregory Corso (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 17, 1962

Corso, Long Live Man. Poetry that jubilates over being a "(hu-)man, Alive, here in the moment".

Product Details

• Paperback: 102 pages
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing (January 17, 1962)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811200256
• ISBN-13: 978-0811200257
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #586,458 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life, Death, Myth, Travel, Pain, Beauty, May 7, 2001

By 

Michael Alexander (New Haven, CT United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Long Live Man (Paperback)

Corso's probably the most criminally underrated poet I can think of, especially considering how much today's teenagers hold the rest of the Beats(a label that made Corso a bit uncomfortable), Kerouac and Ginsberg especially, in awe. Oh well, genius is usually ignored or misunderstood. His style, ranging from the purest of aphorism to the wildest celebration of language's infinite flexibility(he even breaks it a few times!) is never forced; it only serves to inundate the reader with the power of one of the last Romantic souls. A study in contradictions--terse yet lyrical, death-obsessed yet wildly hopeful, grittily simple yet bathed in references-- Corso was a true unique.

Long Live Man is the book that, along with Happy Birthday of Death, ties for best claim to being the man's masterpiece. Written over a series of years of travel, from Greece to Tangiers to Paris to the rest of Europe to New York, this collection chronicles his emotional trials and triumphs from monument to monument, little town to little town, acquaintance to acquaintance. Throughout this time of physical uprooting, Corso is going through a great deal of emotional turmoil. The omnipresence of death and the sense that everything will come to naught press down upon him, but he fights back with that all-consuming love of life that even outdoes the "Carpe Diem" poems of the Roman Horace for sheer vivacity. He flings image after image, experience after experience after experience, at Death, God, Love, Despair, (hu)Man(ity), and ends up with a celebration of all that is worthwhile in life, set against the chilly background of impermanence and death. He binds all of that to his alternately aphoristic and linguistically wild style to make art that will last forever in the reader's mind. There are parts that I can't help but quote all the time when I want to say something profound. Truly, a wonder. Ps: there are a few lines in "Greece" that _will_, if I have any say in the matter, be my epitaph(page 25, the train of thought starting with "Life, I love you..."). Why does NOBODY remember this guy?!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The triumph of mankind is..., March 27, 2000

By 

C. Griffith (New York) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Long Live Man (Paperback)

the subject of this collection of poems. Gregory Corso, Beatnik poet extroardinaire, writes about the glory of being a (hu-)man, Alive, here, in the moment... These poems span a period of traveling for Corso, with sections about his journeys in Greece, Tangiers, and other parts of Europe as well as poems about New York. If you've never read anything by Gregory Corso, this is a good place to start. He creates phrases and passages that stick in your mind at once; this book of poetry needs to be read, and re-read, then read again.