Writing Poetry Can Endanger Your Health - Part Eleven; The Poet As Nice Person by Dave Jaffe

       The Poet as Nice Person - Section One



    What happens when a rich lady meets a former jailbird? Sometimes good things.
    Here's Peggy Guggenheim in Venice in 1958, living close by to her museum full of modern art. The American daughter of a very rich man, she had married twice and lived with three other men. Nearly all these men were horible to her.
     Laurence Vail was a writer and an artist who used to insult her in public. Then came John Ferrar Holms who also used to put her down and took her money. After Holms died, Douglas Garman showed up. He too was an abuser and saw himself as a Marxist.
    "Garman and I had a row about Communism," Guggenheim said. "And I got just so bitchy that he hit me." Just as bad as any of these three men was the German Surrealist visual artist Max Ernst. He took Guugenheim's money and had affairs at the same time with other women.
     Yet then Guggenheim met another American in Venice named Gregory Corso. He was only 23 while she was in her late 50's. And unlike the other men she'd been with, he understood her and was nice to her - at least for a while.
    "Very strange marvelous lady," he wrote to Allen Ginsberg, the Beat poet about Guggenheim. "She is really great.  I told her painters were making her into a creep (and) she laughed." Now Corso hadn't always been a nice guy who treated people with respect. His mother and father split up not long after he was born in the United States. He spent most of his childhood years in foster homes. He ran away from his father  at a young age, stole things to survive and spent most of his teenage years in tough prisons.
     Yet in prison his life changed. He started to read poets like Shelley, Thomas Chatterton, and Christopher Marlowe. In his early 20's he met Beat poet Allen Ginsberg who introduced him to modern poetry. He moved to Boston and started to put jazz rhythms in his poetry. "My music is built in," he said. "It's already natural."
    In any case Corso and Guggenheim got on well together at least at first. Later Corso fell in love with Guggenheim's daughter and trouble ensued. Still, he didn't beat Guggenheim up or take her money. Corso was a poet but also while in contact with Guggenheim he was a nice guy.