CORSO, Gregory.

£3,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Manuscript notebook. A notebook almost completely filled with Corso's handwritten unpublished poetry. The first page has Corso's 57 Greek Street London address and states "c/o Lovell", likely Anna Lovell, who co-founded the little poetry magazine New Departures with Michael Horowitz and David Sladen in 1959. The notebook is likely from Corso's trip to London in June 1965, when he attended the International Poetry Incantation at the Royal Albert Hall.Aside from two brief notes, one on the National Gallery's Martyrdom of St Sebastian ("great - wonderful") and another on the militancy of equal rights groups in the USA ("each feeling superior to the other"), the notebook is comprised of unpublished poetry drafts. Ranging from critiques of capitalism ("O plenitude! Wealth!... Once abundant Spring now festooned with eyes of echo") through questions of faith ("if God is the plot of a human being's life - has life a plot"), the contents exemplify Corso's output. These are evidently snatches of ideas penned as inspiration struck: a brief meditation on "planetary cubic capacity" is accompanied by a loose sketch of the Sagittarius archer and geometric shapes, and the shortest page reads just "Little girl", struck through. Only one leaf is completely blank, though there is evidence that Corso removed several pages.

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.