Dream Driving

Here's Gregory Corso's exquisite driving-dream (or dream-driving) poem from Gasoline (1958):

Last Night I Drove A Car

Last night I drove a car
not knowing how to drive
not owning a car
I drove and knocked down
people I loved
. . . went 120 through one town.

I stopped at Hedgeville
and slept in the back seat
. . . excited about my new life.

(Columbia U. Archives)

Corso was born on at St. Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village. He went to jail at 17 for stealing a suit from a tailor's shop for a date. He died in Italy in 2001, with lots of rambling in between.

Allen Ginsberg wrote in the Introduction to Gasoline: "He's probably the greatest poet in America, and he's starving in Europe."