Gregory Corso: Doubting Thomist

kirby olson

Gregory Corso is the most intensely spiritual of the Beat generation poets and still by far the least explored. The virtue of Kirby Olson’s Gregory Doubting Thomist is that it is the first book to place all of Corso’s work in a philosophical perspective, concentrating on Corso as a poet torn between a static Catholic Thomist viewpoint and that of a progressive surrealist. While Corso is a subject of great controversy—his work often being seen as nihilistic and wildly comic—Olson argues that Corso’s poetry, in fact, maintains an insistent theme of doubt and faith with regard to his early Catholicism. Although many critics have attempted to read his poetry, and some have done so brilliantly, Olson—in his approach and focus—is the first to attempt to give a holistic understanding of the oeuvre as essentially one not of entertainment or hilarity but of a deep spiritual and philosophical quest by an important and profound mind. In nine chapters, Olson addresses Corso from a broad philosophical perspective and shows how Corso takes on particular philosophical issues and contributes to new understandings. Corso’s concerns, like his influence, extend beyond the Beat generation as he speaks about concerns that have troubled thinkers from the beginning of the Western tradition, and his answers offer provocative new openings for thought. Corso may very well be the most important Catholic poet in the American literary canon, a visionary like Burroughs and Ginsberg, whose work illuminated a generation. Written in a lively and engaging style, Gregory Doubting Thomist seeks to keep Corso’s memory alive and at last delve fully into Corso’s poetry.

Genres poetryessays

200 pages, Hardcover

First published August 30,2002

This edition

Format: 200 pages, Hardcover
Published: August 30, 2002 by Southern Illinois University Press
ISBN: 9780809324477
ASIN: 0809324474
Language: English

About the author

kirby olson

Kirby Olson is Professor of Philosophy, Literature, and Creative Writing at SUNY-Delhi. He studied poetry at Naropa Institute with Gregory Corso and Allen Ginsberg from 1977 to 1979 and taught English and American Literature at a Finnish university. His poems have been published in First Things, Christianity and Literature, Lutheran Forum, Partisan Review, South Dakota Review, North Dakota Quarterly and Poetry East, among others.