cover image Mindfield

Mindfield

Gregory Corso. Thunder's Mouth Press, $24.95 (268pp) ISBN 978-0-938410-85-0

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 / Then be it everybody's crime,'' he suggests in the previously unpublished ``On Chessman's Crime,'' contending that no act of passion is purely or simply sordid, no matter what convention may decree.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. (Dec.)