Mindfield: New and Selected Poems
Once a Beat bad boy, Corso has grown up, revealed to good and ill effect in this collection of new and familiar work. At his best when driven by a blast of heretical energy, the insurgent is able to persuade us of the wisdom in bedlam. "Be abnormal sex a crime? / Then be it everybody's crime," he suggests in the previously unpublished "On Chessman's Crime," contending that no act of passion is purely or simply sordid, no matter what convention may decree. In a classic like "Marriage," the poet performs a manic, hilarious balancing act in considering the right and wrong of propriety ("the girl next door") versus creative anarchy (the mischievous garble of "Radio belly! Cat shovel!"). Especially in some poems from his middle period, Corso's sense of play wanes, and he whines wordily, lectures and declaims. Still, few are as sincere--or as much fun--in making a virtue of perversity.Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.