Gasoline was published by City Lights Books as Number 8 in the Pocket Poets Series in 1958 — the same series that had published Ginsberg’s Howl two years earlier. It established Gregory Corso as a major poet of the Beat Generation and, many would argue, the most naturally gifted: where Ginsberg achieved power through accumulation and Kerouac through speed, Corso’s gift was for the single stunning image, the unexpected word, the surrealist leap that illuminated rather than obscured.
The Poems
The collection opens with an introduction by Allen Ginsberg praising Corso’s “language-Loss” — his willingness to let language go where it will, trusting the music of association over the logic of argument.
“Uccello” — Corso’s homage to the Renaissance painter, a poem about seeing that demonstrates what it describes: precise, colored, spatial.
“Italian Extravaganza” — a street poem of wild energy: “Mrs. Lombardi’s window is a disgrace to the neighborhood…”
“In the Fleeting Hand of Time” — one of Corso’s most anthologized poems, meditating on mortality with a lightness that makes the subject bearable.
“I Am 25” — the poem of youthful self-declaration: “With a survey of the world… / I am led to my final belief.”
“Mexican Impressions” — travel poems that anticipate the international Beat aesthetic.
The poems are characterized by sudden tonal shifts — from comedy to tenderness to rage to wonder within a few lines — and by an ear for the American language in all its registers: street speech, literary allusion, advertising jargon, and pure lyric song.
Context
Corso’s biography was itself Beat mythology: raised in foster homes and on the streets of New York’s Lower East Side, imprisoned at seventeen (for theft), educated in the Tombs and at Clinton state prison (where he read voraciously), discovered by Ginsberg in a Greenwich Village bar in 1950. He was younger than Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Burroughs — the baby of the group — and his poetry retained a childlike quality of wonder that the others’ work sometimes lacked.
Gasoline was his second collection (after the self-published The Vestal Lady on Brattle, 1955) and his first widely available book. Its publication by City Lights — alongside Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, and Denise Levertov — placed him definitively within the Beat movement.
Collecting Gasoline
First edition (City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1958): Pocket Poets Series #8. Stapled wrappers with characteristic City Lights design.
Identification points:
- City Lights Pocket Poets Series Number 8
- First printing (no reprint notices)
- Introduction by Allen Ginsberg
- Approximately 50 pages
Market values: First printings in fine condition bring $200–$600. The stapled wrapper format means many copies are worn, creased, or split.
Signed copies: $500–$1,500. Corso signed freely at readings throughout his life.
Later printings (City Lights has kept the book continuously in print): Minimal collecting value except when signed.
The Pocket Poets format makes this a crossover item — collected both as Beat literature and as a City Lights Press artifact, alongside Howl, A Coney Island of the Mind, and the other early numbers in the series.