Now you see it- now you don’t see it ( true account of Gregory Corso)
Once I met Gregory in Boulder, Colorado,
showed him my translations of his poetry which he found
beautiful and wanted to try my Taurus ring on,
Now you see it- now you don’t see it, he said.
It took Ginsberg two months to return my ring from him.
Once I met Gregory in NYC after my incredible marijuana arrest,
And having heard my story, he took 400 dollars
from his left boot where he kept money and gave it to me
“take it, kid, you’d need it for the lawyers”; the story of the ring forgotten;
The last time I saw him in New York,
I was with my dad, buying a TV set,
When Gregory jumped on us, out of nowhere,
cursing the commercial habits of high capitalism- ” don’t you come from
Europe folks,” he yelled, “don’t you have some taste and elegance?
You don’t need this junk to fill your brain with non- seeeense”, he said
And then disappeared into Astor place
muggy dust for ever..
Poet, essayist, fiction writer, playwright, art critic, translator, Serbian-born Nina Zivancevic published 17 books of poetry. She has also written three books of short stories, two novels and 2 books of essays published in Paris, New York and Belgrade. The recipient of many literary awards, a former assistant to Allen Ginsberg, she has also co-edited numerous anthologies of contemporary world poetry. She has contributed to New York Arts Magazine, Modern Painters, American Book Review, East Village Eye, Republique de lettres. She has lectured at Naropa University, New York University and the Harriman Institute in the U.S., she has taught British studies at La Sorbonne and the History of Avant-garde Theatre at Paris 8 University in France. She has actively worked for theatre ( with the “Living Theatre”in NYC) and radio( 4 of her plays were emitted in the U.S. and Great Britain). She lives and works in Paris.