Cynthia Clark – Gregory Corso’s “Swan Girl”

by Kurt Hemmer

The Beat Museum is thrilled to present this collaboration with Kurt Hemmer, featuring original letters, illustrations, and other material from the Beat Museum archives—items never before available for public view—until now.

Part of a larger work in progress, The Poem Human: A Gregory Corso Biography, Kurt Hemmer brings us this revelatory essay, “Cynthia Clark – Gregory Corso’s ‘Swan Girl'”:

The first intense romantic relationship of Gregory Corso’s life was with a woman who called herself Sura. Placing her in the role of “the one that got away,” he praised Sura as his edifier. He remembered her as the love of his life, despite the brief time they had together from June 1955 to when he went to San Francisco at the end of July 1956. Though Gregory had other affairs, very little is known of Corso’s romantic interests before her. That changed when the branch manager, Michael Voss, of a library in the County of San Diego, California contacted The Beat Museum in San Francisco in 2016. A resident of Borrego Springs, known as Cinder, wanted to find a good home for an important collection of letters and drawings, and with the help of the librarian mailed them to Jerry Cimino. Until now, little was known of their original owner—Cynthia Anne Clark.

Corso met Cynthia Clark in 1954, when he was 24 and she was 18

Cynthia’s relationship with Gregory began before he met and continued after he had fallen in love with Sura. In 1954, he began writing to Cynthia (whom he also called Cindy or just C), a Radcliffe freshman majoring in Fine Arts and living in Moors Hall, while he was still living at 12 Ash Street Place in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She had beautiful red hair, pale skin, and an austere demeanor. As an artist with a dark aura, she made an impression on him. Her father was Dr. Donald M. Clark, the medical director of Isham Infirmary Hospital at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, where Cynthia lived with him. Her mother, Francena B. Clark, lived in Dublin, New Hampshire. Cynthia had a younger brother, Peter, who would become a doctor like his father, and a younger sister, Judith.

Gregory sent Cynthia a love poem. He almost never wrote love poems. Corso enthusiasts might have difficulty recalling a published Corso poem that could be categorized as a “love poem.” Yet, he did write a love poem for her. He told her, “I have no copy. If you seem fit you may at choice either destroy it or stash it away. Definitely do not show it to anyone. Not that I would fear its lack of literary merit: and it does lack, but that I’d not like to have its impersonality lulled over, and discussed. . . . You will see it, yes; but, you, well you’re the closest thing to me in the world at present.”[1]Gregory Corso letter to Cynthia Clark from 12 Ash St. Place, Gregory Corso Collection, Beat Museum, copy in possession of the author, courtesy of Jerry Cimino.

The two-page “Poem to C. C.” suggests that their relationship was physical, but he felt a coldness from her: “Kissing you, I again kissed the never girl with your warmth, / The stone lips did not breathe it back to me.”[2]Gregory Corso, “Poem to C. C.,” Gregory Corso Collection, Beat Museum, copy in possession of the author, courtesy of Jerry Cimino

He romanticized his paramour as his “swan-girl,” perhaps because of her long, thin neck: “And you shall be the swan, my swan-girl / Of no wind or water; my swan-girl.”[3]Corso, “Poem to C. C.”

After finishing the poem, he wrote, “I can’t write anymore. If tomorrow I love you as I now love you I shall mail this to you. It’s so hard for me to love again. It’s so hard for me to believe, and right now I can’t believe. I’ll see tomorrow.”[4]Corso, “Poem to C. C.”

The letter that accompanied the poem

In the letter that accompanied the poem, he had said that his heart was set on a trip with her to New York or New Hampshire. He wrote, “Breathe deeply, deeply; stand naked before your mirror; say: Gregory, Gregory—And then go to sleep. I did just that last night. I said: Cynthia Cynthia—. . . If I say I love you and you say you don’t; I shall not be wounded, in fact, I’d be joyed! I wouldn’t love you if you did love me; although I want to hear you say it so that I could laugh at you and make you sillier than you are.”[5]Corso letter to Clark from 12 Ash St. Place He was giving himself an out. If she rejected him, as he feared, he could say it was all just for a laugh.

While she was out of her Radcliffe dorm, Gregory snuck into her room and put some drawings and a note into her journal. He had taken the liberty of reading her private thoughts. He confessed, “I hope you don’t mind my inserting a few drawings in your beautiful dear poignant journal. I was so overcome by your recorded sensitivity that I felt I just had to . . . even if it meant breaking into a treasury you alone possess.”[6]Gregory Corso note to C. C., Gregory Corso Collection, Beat Museum, copy in possession of the author, courtesy of Jerry Cimino

He wondered if he had been a bad influence on her. After reading her journal, he concluded, “I’m very much ashamed of myself for not realizing that sooner. All I could, and those similar to me, do is alter in you what is not good and strong and beautiful. No matter how interesting we may seem, you must never take to heart what is not good and strong and beautiful.”[7]Corso note to C. C.

Reading her journal had made him worried about her: “If I’m going to be your friend, and I hope you want me to be, I want to see in you, from now on, the health and calm and laughter your creativity deserves. . . just stay home and write or paint, yes paint or dance . . . anything, anything than caressing gloom with gloom. . . . Think, girl, what could be more to your liking? I know you can do it. After what I have read, I am all too certain.”[8]Corso note to C. C.

Cynthia tended to wallow in her ennui, and Gregory was determined to pull her out of it.

When he moved to New York at the end of the semester, he continued to be reminded of her. She had told him not to write, but there is a draft at the Harry Ransom Center of a letter he composed to her at 110 MacDougal Street. He’d seen a woman walking near the Hudson River that made him think of her. Cindy had told Gregory that she wished she was a boy, probably not seriously but out of frustration. He wrote, “You have all the wondrous attributes and mysticisms of being a great woman—.”[9]Holograph drafts in notebook. Gregory Corso Papers. Box 8, Folder 12. Harry Ransom Center. The University of Texas at Austin

He knew that she was having trouble with the men in her life. “Oh, I know men are shit—,” he wrote, “how well they refuse to recognize you, your mind . . . . But remember, I too . . . once did himself try to entertain your body instead of your mind. Yet I’m sure you hold other opinions of me— . . . With men like me you’re loved with uncertainty—I love myself too much to think your mind more important than your body.”[10]Holograph drafts in notebook. He ended in an attempt to spur her, “But damn you, always remember, whether you be woman, Lesbian, bitch, snake, rat, wombat—Always be beautiful—completely beautiful—otherwise all this . . . would mean nothing to an old lady 40 years from now called Miss Cindy—.”[11]Holograph drafts in notebook. This carpe diem letter expressed, in some ways, what he said to himself. He wanted his life to be a beautiful poem.

After seeing a red-haired woman seven stories below the fire escape stairs where he perched, he realized how much he missed her, and he decided to write. “I have been terribly bored,” he told her. “I have become a hooded person among hooded people—I have no self-joy—nor do the people. I drink, I do not work, I have sold my soul for the affections of at least 30 women since I’ve left Cambridge—I’ve went to bed with all—and still I am without love—and still am I bored. Cambridge never knew boredom—alas!”[12]Gregory Corso letter to Cynthia Clark, July 1955, Gregory Corso Collection, Beat Museum, copy in possession of the author, courtesy of Jerry Cimino He was having disturbing visions and was unable to write poetry. He thought she would understand: “it’s the darkness that I once saw in you that impels me write you.”[13]Corso letter to Clark, July 1955 He drew a portrait of her, but he felt her image fading from his memory.

Gregory Writes from the San Remo, NYC

Though he lived at 110 MacDougal Street, he told her to write him at the San Remo Café at 93 MacDougal Street, maybe to prevent someone, maybe Sura, from intercepting the letters. Writing from the San Remo in July, Corso told Cindy, “Would it enlighten you if I were to tell you a truth? I have felt and still feel that you and only you were the really great soul, dark soul I had the good fortune to meet in Cambridge.”[14]Gregory Corso letter to Cindy from San Remo, Gregory Corso Collection, Beat Museum, copy in possession of the author, courtesy of Jerry Cimino In a last ditch effort, he wrote, “So damn you, damn you, damn you, may the mountains of fair pinkwhite boys crush you with their come, so damn you, damn you. . . . I love you. I love you. I shall always be your good friend.”[15]Corso letter to Cindy from San Remo It was a strange final attempt to seduce her.

Cindy began a letter on July 22, found in the Ransom Center, which she mailed to the San Remo, expressing her boredom, depression, and anger. She felt that writing to Gregory, which she thought of doing from time to time during the summer, accomplished nothing. She called him a “bastard” and “beautiful.” “It is as it should be that you can’t remember me,” she wrote, “. . . there was nothing to remember.”[16]Letter to Gregory Corso from Cynthia Clark, 22 July 1955. Gregory Corso papers. Box 9, Folder 2. Harry Ransom Center. The University of Texas at Austin Since he had told her he was starving, she sent him a little money, which was her father’s. She described callously wanting to kill one of her boyfriends and being indifferent about another. She’d been sneaking into her mother’s stable in Dublin, New Hampshire to drink gin. Cindy told Gregory, “No, no, my face didn’t lie, that’s why you don’t remember it . . . it’s the only thing that didn’t, and sometimes even it conveyed wrongly, through no fault of its own.”[17]Letter to Corso from Clark, 22 July 1955 On July 27, having not mailed the letter yet, she continued to write. She’d been reading Nietzsche, encouraged Gregory to read (short stories philosophy, anything) to get him back to writing poetry, and wanted him to buy some healthy food. Cindy told him about the pittance she gave him, “This money . . . won’t last long on wine and women.”[18]Letter to Corso from Clark, 22 July 1955 She wondered why he couldn’t get a job, or multiple jobs, like her father had when he was young.

There is a draft of a letter addressed to a “beautiful couple,” one of whom may be Cindy, in one of Corso’s notebooks at the Ransom Center, in which he wrote, “I have not worked. I decided many years ago never to work again—how I do it I’m incapable of expressing. Although I will say I do it ‘honorably.’”[19]Holograph drafts in notebook. Gregory Corso Papers. Box 8, Folder 12. Harry Ransom Center. The University of Texas at Austin He wrote of being in New York for three months “of extreme gloom, drunkenness, dissatisfaction, and no poetry.”[20]Holograph drafts in notebook. Gregory Corso Papers. Box 8, Folder 12. Harry Ransom Center. The University of Texas at Austin He missed Cambridge, but he knew he would not return, even though “New York is a terribly fearsome place. . . . Damn city, it always takes, always, and never gives.”[21]Holograph drafts in notebook. Gregory Corso Papers. Box 8, Folder 12. Harry Ransom Center. The University of Texas at Austin He said perhaps there is a chance he could go to India.

On August 1, 1955, Corso wrote to Cindy again. He was concerned. She had been trying to drink away her boredom with gin in the stable again. How serious was she about stabbing her boyfriend with a knife? He tried to talk her out of it:

“I’ve always loved the smell of manure . . . but manure means nothing that oppresses the redhair of a young girl crouched with gin. Sit. Crouch. Drink. But never think in terms of: shiny silver long sweepy snakey knives. It’s too unlike you. It’s too girly . . . too untrue. I love you. We two, you and I, we have picked up our bones like toys because we are small like boys whacking them out of use.”[22]Gregory Corso letter to Cynthia Clark, August 1-2, 1955, Gregory Corso Collection, Beat Museum, copy in possession of the author, courtesy of Jerry Cimino He wanted to visit her in Dublin, but she had only sent him twelve dollars. In exaggerated rage he wrote:

“12 dollars enough to laugh at me with. 12 dollars enough to use you. Ha. Ha. Use you, because I’ve never loved you, and I have always found in you an awkwardness I could kill with my fists, as I have killed rabbits with my fists. 12 dollars . . . not enough to visit Dublin. No enough to hold you, kiss you, crouch you; gin you.”[23]Corso letter to Clark, August 1-2, 1955 She was probably hip to his sui generis playfulness.

Gregory tells Cynthia about Sura

He continued writing the next day, August 2, adding to the letter. He had a new girlfriend he wanted to tell her about, who he’d been involved with since June: “There’s a girl here. She’s marvelous. She can recite literally 50 stanzas of Swinburne. She can recite Rimbaud, Yeats, Blake, Shelley. She is not of this age. She slyly picked up your letter and called it: All right, but . . . I slapped her, and she’s in a rage over the length of this letter. She wants to know more about you. I will tell her.”[24]Corso letter to Clark, August 1-2, 1955 The girl’s name was Sura.

There is some overlap in his romance with Sura, which began in June, and his letters to Cynthia that have a whiff of wooing. It appears that the discovery of Cindy’s letter to Gregory at the beginning of August caused him to confess that Sura was his girlfriend and ended his overt flirtation with Cynthia.

On November 1, now addressing himself as “your friend,” he wrote to Cynthia, “I have finished a play. Sura has inspired me wondrously.”[25]Gregory Corso letter to Cynthia Clark, November 1, 1955, Gregory Corso Collection, Beat Museum, copy in possession of the author, courtesy of Jerry Cimino After Sura had discovered that Gregory was corresponding with Cynthia, his tone changed from being a hopeful, though dejected, love interest to being a brotherly friend. It was possible that Sura was now reading the exchange of letters between Gregory and Cynthia. What is clear is that he wanted to maintain a relationship with Cynthia despite his newfound infatuation with Sura. It is possible to read his new intention as trying to make Cynthia and Sura sisters. If this was his intent, to some degree he was successful. He informed Cynthia, “Read more and more of William Blake, my immortal bard.”[26]Corso letter to Clark, November 1, 1955 This suggests that it was Sura, rather than Ginsberg, who first coaxed Corso into delving into Blake. It confirms his lifelong insistence that Sura had been a major guide behind his literary education. He would make sure that Cynthia was aware of the esteem he held for Sura.

Though she was humble about her talents, Cynthia was sending drawings to Gregory and Sura to evaluate. In the middle of November 1955, the response she received was overwhelmingly positive. Corso wrote to her, “You are, beyond all the knowledge I have of you, a capital artist! Yes, capital! Never forsake your craft.”[27]Gregory Corso letter to Cynthia Clark, “ah, what a beautiful letter!” Corso Collection, Beat Museum, copy in possession of the author, courtesy of Jerry Cimino Sura was equally laudatory. Gregory informed Cynthia, “Sura is overwhelmed with you! And that should be quite enough proof for you that you are GREAT. She only likes the great, and her taste is one of immense disqualification. . . . Sura is also a great artist She is the most meticulous thinker of wonderous form and color.”[28]Corso letter to Clark, “ah, what a beautiful letter!” He had a great idea: “You two must eventually meet.”[29]Corso letter to Clark, “ah, what a beautiful letter!” The fact that he wanted her to meet Sura should not be taken lightly. It was a sign that he wanted to keep Cynthia in his life. Sura was his guru and muse, and he wanted his friend, Cynthia, to be inspired by her, too. Gregory had also been doing some writing other than poetry. He told Cynthia, “A new Village newspaper has been coming out. In two of the three issues that have been issued, I, under three different pen names, have had three letters published in it. I will mail them to you. Of course it’s all tongue in cheek, you understand.”[30]Corso letter to Clark, “ah, what a beautiful letter!” Gregory was speaking of The Village Voice.

Corso at the birth of the Village Voice

The first issue of The Village Voice appeared on October 26, 1955. The second story, “NJ Youth, Ninth to Rob Store, Is Also Unluckiest,” was about an eighteen-year-old boy who had been arrested for robbing a liquor store on West 12th Street. The November 2 issue had a letter to the editor from Robert DuNuncio of MacDougal Street. Robert was disgruntled by the handling of the eighteen-year-old boy’s story. DuNuncio wrote, “At least that 18-year-old was rebelling, and that’s more than your paper has even dared venture.”[31]Robert DuNuncio, “Dull, Desiccant, Embarassing [sic],” Letters to the Editor, The Village Voice, November 2, 1955, 4

This letter was almost certainly from Corso. One of the other two letters is probably one signed Anton Gould (which combines the names of Corso’s subterranean friends Anton Rosenberg and Stanley Gould), criticizing The Village Voice’s movie critic, “Who is she, your movie critic, this Brigid Murnaghan? Where does she come from? And just where the devil does she think she’s going?”[32]Anton Gould, “Who Is Brigid?,” “Letters to the Editor,” The Village Voice, November 9, 1955, 4. Who was Brigid, besides being a movie critic? She was a poet and friend of Gregory. He was messing with her. Shortly before her death she gave an interview in which she said, “Gregory was so much fun. We’d go to the movies all the time. Nobody dated Gregory Corso. You couldn’t say with a straight face that you dated Gregory Corso. He just wasn’t there for that.”[33]Dylan Foley, “An Interview with the Greenwich Village Poet and Hellraiser Brigid Murnaghan, Bleecker Street, May 2014,” The Last Bohemians, May 12, 2020, https://lastbohemians.blogspot.com/2014/10/an-interview-with-greenwich-village.html The probable third letter, signed The Reverend Mose M. Jackson, stated, “In the fifty years of my life I have had at least twenty visions; ergo, when I say that last night I visioned The Village Voice to become the most provoking journal of balderdash in this city of young hoodlums and Lesbians, all you editors had better mend your ways and, if you’re wise, abandon all, and flee.”[34]The Reverend Mose M. Jackson, “A Warning,” “Letters to the Editor,” The Village Voice, November 9, 1955, 4 The definite article in the reverend’s signature and the mention of hoodlums suggest this is Corso’s work.

At the end of his mid-November letter to Cynthia, Gregory wrote, “We send pictures. Mine are signed. Sura’s is signed. You are important to us.”[35]Corso letter to Clark, “ah, what a beautiful letter!” The sending of original drawings was another sign of trust. Sura sent a self-portrait and a portrait of Gregory. If Cynthia was important to Gregory, Sura would make her important, too.

After New Year’s, Cynthia received another letter from Gregory. Apparently, she had not responded as soon as Gregory and Sura had hoped after sending her their drawings, and Sura was worried that Cynthia did not like her work. Corso wrote, “Sura bought me a long black velvet cloak. It is big and hangs down to my toes in broken-lighted ripples. It also has a cape. I walked in the wind with it on a long dark street.”[36]Gregory Corso letter to Cynthia Clark, “And did you have a New Year?” Gregory Corso Collection, Beat Museum, copy in possession of the author, courtesy of Jerry Cimino Gregory and Sura had also got a new Siamese cat, Daphene. Before he could mail his letter, he received hers. It told him of a new boyfriend. In the postscript to the letter he told her that he had read the Bengali poet Tagore and encouraged her to read Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. Perhaps these were readings encouraged by Sura. Upside down on the first page, he added, “Sura and I are/may be off to Charleston S. Carolina then Mexico City then Venezuela, then Africa. I will never forget you. I shall write.”[37]Corso letter to Clark, “And did you have a New Year?” At least at that moment, he envisioned a life of traveling the world with Sura. Before sending the letter, he typed, “WE WENT! CHARLESTON IS BEAUTIFUL!”[38]Corso letter to Clark, “And did you have a New Year?” It must have been from Charleston that he sent her this letter that he began in New York.

From Charleston, Gregory sent Cynthia a postcard postmarked March 8, 1956. In her previous letter she had told him that she had fallen in love with a new boyfriend. Despite his relationship with Sura, Gregory was still hurt that Cynthia had never told him that she had loved him. He wrote, “I am happy for you. I always knew you had love in you. Remember, you once denied that? I am happy, but not altogether. Why have you ceased to write me? Maybe you want to. All right do. One does become weary. Lost, all 1954-55 Cambridge lost. I remember nothing. Soon I am to be 26, sad . . . lost.”[39]Gregory Corso postcard to Cynthia Clark, March 8, 1956, Gregory Corso Collection, Beat Museum, copy in possession of the author, courtesy of Jerry Cimino The idea of traveling the world with Sura had stalled in Charleston. As a poet privileging youth, he was feeling the weight of time, even though he was only twenty-five. He was now significantly older than when the poet Chatterton took his life at seventeen and when Rimbaud had given up writing at twenty. The memories he had lost of Cambridge could very well have included the passion he had once felt for Cynthia.

She wrote again and informed him that he had a poem published in i.e. The Cambridge Review. She wanted to pick up his spirit. This poem was probably “The Poor Bustard” published in the March 20, 1956 issue and later in Elegiac Feelings American (1970). Gregory, playing with the name of a bird and its resemblance to “bastard,” renounces his former self and affirms his new identity as a poet: “I am not the King of birds, / Nor am I the Nuncio of their priests; / But I am the craftsman who carves the words.”[40]Gregory Corso, “The Poor Bustard,” i.e. The Cambridge Review 1 no. 5 (March 1956): 63-64. 63. Corso, still in Charleston, had not known of the publication and asked Cynthia to send him a copy. He sent her more of his drawings. It was clearly important that he wanted to impress her with his skills and that he valued her opinion of his work. In her previous letter, she explained that she was having difficulty sexually with her boyfriend. Gregory tried to console her in his own funny and outlandish manner that would become characteristic, “Sex is best when old Protestants are looking. Sex is best when Hurrican [sic] Jackson [a boxer] is looking. Sex is best when you look yourself. Sex is always best. But for sensitive people it is terrible. We have the gods to contend with . . . I rape Jesus every night. I receive erections everytime [sic] I see a crucifixion. Sex is everything. God, smoke, dust, pumpkin . . . .”[41]Gregory Corso letter to C, Gregory Corso Collection, Beat Museum, copy in possession of the author, courtesy of Jerry Cimino As usual, he saw himself as being like Cynthia, sensitive. Her problem became a problem “we” had in his mind.

Cynthia Engaged to Robert Sedgwick

Unfortunately, that is all we have, so far, of the correspondence between Gregory and Cynthia.

On February 8, 1959, Cynthia’s parents announced their daughter’s engagement to Robert Sedgwick (brother of Warhol superstar Edie Sedgwick) in The Boston Globe.[42]“Cynthia Clark of Andover to Wed Robert Sedgewick [sic] 2d,” Boston Globe, February 8, 1959, 79. A similar announcement was published in The New York Times on February 15.[43]“Cynthia Clark Fiancee of R. M. Sedgwick 2d,” New York Times, February 15, 1959, 107 It must have come as a shock to Corso that his old Harvard friend was engaged to Cynthia. Nowhere in their correspondence had Bobby been mentioned. In Cynthia’s possession was a postcard, postmarked March 31, 1959, from Corso at Apt. 16, 170 East 2^nd Street in New York, where he lived with Ginsberg, to Robert Sedgwick in Boston. It was intended for both Bobby and Cynthia, though her name is not on it. Corso must have heard of their engagement, and, in that light, it can be read as a congratulatory missive. In pencil Corso wrote, “Dear Angels—I love you both—so much that I feign to recall the touch of old-youth we indulged in—May God have mercy on our souls—My joy to Magoon—what remains of it.”[44]Gregory Corso postcard to Robert Sedgwick, March 31, 1959, Gregory Corso Collection, Beat Museum, copy in possession of the author, courtesy of Jerry Cimino

Was “Magoon” a person or a coded reference? The word “magoon” can be slang for a major mistake. Was Cynthia and Bobby’s mistake their engagement? Something else entirely? In blue ink on the top right corner, Allen Ginsberg had written on the postcard, “Corso is going mad.”[45]Gregory Corso postcard to Robert Sedgwick, March 31, 1959, Gregory Corso Collection, Beat Museum, copy in possession of the author, courtesy of Jerry Cimino This could be read as a sign of Gregory’s jealousy and might explain his diminishing joy mentioned in the postcard. In any event, the engagement was broken off. Cynthia and Bobby were not married. When asked about Cynthia, Bobby’s sister, Alice, claimed she had never heard of Cynthia Anne Clark.[46]John Sedgwick, Email to the author, October 1, 2022

In an undated letter to Cynthia, probably from the end of 1957, Sura wrote that for almost a year she had been in Europe. If Cynthia was coming to Europe, Sura wanted to see her again.[47]Hope Savage letter to Cynthia Clark, Gregory Corso Collection, Beat Museum, copy in possession of the author, courtesy of Jerry Cimino Corso had succeeded in making them friends, at least on a superficial level. The letter suggests that Sura felt close to Cynthia and that they had met before. It is not known if Cynthia responded to her.

When giving her London mailing address at the American Express, Sura revealed to Cynthia, for the first time, her real name—Hope Savage.