Gasoline

Gregory Corso exploded onto the Beat scene in the mid-1950s when the names Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs were changing the course of American literature. Corso added a street appeal to Beat poetry that may have been lacking in the works of others who had more elitist backgrounds. Corso had been a real live juvenile delinquent, in and out of reform schools and written off by society as a wayward youth. But while in prison he learned to read -- and he read deeply and began to produce his own poetry, showing a rare perception and facility with words. Gasoline was Corso's first major work, originally published in 1958 by City Lights Books, the essential publisher for the Beat Generation. Corso carved a place for himself among the Beats, achieving a fame in poetry arguably second only to Allen Ginsberg. In Gasoline readers will see the emergence of a major new poet, a talent with an unbridled lust for life and a desire to put his unique stamp on all that he saw in the world around him.