Peter Orlovsky, a Life in Words

Peter Anton Orlovsky (1933–2010) was more than just the long-time partner of Allen Ginsberg; he was a poet in his own right. Orlovsky’s work has appeared in The New American Poetry 1945–1960 (1960) and The Beatitude Anthology (1965). His work has been included in literary magazines such as Yugen and Outsider. Orlovsky appeared in films such as Andy Warhol’s Couch (1965), Robert Frank films, Pull My Daisy (1959; based on a Kerouac script), and Me and My Brother (1969). Bill Morgan is an American writer, known for his work as an archivist and bibliographer for popular figures such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Abbie Hoffman, and Timothy Leary. Morgan was Allen Ginsberg’s personal archivist and bibliographer. Over their 20-year relationship, Morgan became quite close to Ginsberg and wrote his biography, I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg (2006). Morgan has written extensively on the Beat generation and its key figures.

• Peter Orlovsky, a Life in Words: Intimate Chronicles of a Beat Writer

“Although Orlovsky is best known as the partner of Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg, he was also a prolific, though mostly unpublished, writer. Morgan changes that with this judicious selection of Orlovksy’s poems, prose, correspondence, and journal entries…The surreal, scatological, charming, and occasionally transcendent results bring a new perspective to key moments in Beat history, such as the assembly of William S. Burrough’s Naked Lunch manuscript in Tangier…Morgan makes a compelling case for [Orlovsky’s] reappraisal. The intensely personal, picaresque adventures he narrates here deserve the attention of Ginsberg admirers and Beat scholars.”—Library Journal"Editor Bill Morgan has assembled a wide range of Orlovsky writings in chronological order accompanied by numerous well-chosen photographs, many not widely seen before, along with frequently inserted editor's notes to support contextual flow between selections...It thus adds up to an autobiography of sorts, at times a painfully honest one, and it presents a heretofore missing subnarrative of the Beat Generation."—Rain Taxi“This rich and valuable collection of diary entries, journal notations, letters, poems and dreams gathered from various archives with copious, careful, and helpful editorial commentary by Bill Morgan answers my unasked question (how does it feel to live with America’s most famous poet?) and helps to reveal an unexplained and previously unexplored corner of Beat history.” —John Tytell for American Book Review“Peter Orlovsky was the secret heart of the Beats. He wrote and roamed among them. This book contains unknown fragments of their world—the words of their orphaned angel.”—Patti Smith, Poet, Singer/Songwriter“‘Can anyone talk to me, hold me as I am?’ This is a poignant, intimate, and captivating document of the inner life of Peter Orlovsky, life-long mainstay to Allen Ginsberg, and crucial to the Beat annals. ‘Sad noble Peter, truly an angel and not my joke boy,’ Allen wrote in 1955. Yet Peter was keenly present albeit a shy participant in one of the most exciting periods in radical belletristic cultural and political time. I knew him as poet, singer, fellow-Buddhist Naropa teacher, and friend. I can still hear his yodel as he rode his tractor. May he have his say here, out of the shadows and into our hearts.”—Anne Waldman, Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Naropa University“Peter Orlovsky was one of a kind, and his poetry was one of a kind. It’s in-your-face poetry, at once comic and tragic.”—Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Poet