Peter Anton Orlovsky (July 8, 1933 – May 30, 2010) was an

American poet The poets listed below were either born in the United States or else published much of their poetry while living in that country. A B C D E F G H I–J K L M N O P Q *George Quasha (born 1942 in poetry, 1942) R ...

and

actor An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), li ...

. He was the long-time partner of

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...

Early life and career

Orlovsky was born in the

Lower East Side The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets. Traditionally an im ...

of New York City, the son of Katherine (née Schwarten) and Oleg Orlovsky, a

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

immigrant. He was raised in poverty and was forced to drop out of Newtown High School in his senior year so he could support his impoverished family. After many odd jobs, he began working as an

orderly In healthcare, an orderly (also known as a ward assistant, nurse assistant or healthcare assistant) is a hospital attendant whose job consists of assisting medical and nursing staff with various nursing and medical interventions. The highest ro ...

at Creedmoor State Mental Hospital, known today as

Creedmoor Psychiatric Center Creedmoor Psychiatric Center is a psychiatric hospital at 79-26 Winchester Boulevard in Queens Village, Queens, New York, United States. It provides inpatient, outpatient and residential services for severely mentally ill patients. The hospita ...

. In 1953, Orlovsky was drafted into the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

for the

Korean War , date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...

at nineteen years old. Army psychiatrists ordered his transfer off the front to work as a medic in a San Francisco hospital. He later went to

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. He met Allen Ginsberg while working as a model for the painter Robert La Vigne in San Francisco in December 1954. Prior to meeting Ginsberg, Orlovsky had made no deliberate attempts at becoming a poet. Ginsberg was living with his girlfriend Sheila Williams Boucher at the time, but broke off the relationship to be with Orlovsky. Orlovsky also had a sexual relationship with Boucher during this time. Ginsberg and Orlovsky considered their relationship to be a "marriage sealed by vows." It was an

open relationship An open relationship is an intimate relationship that is sexually non-monogamous. The term is distinct from polyamory, in that it generally indicates a relationship where there is a primary emotional and intimate relationship between two partner ...

, in part because Orlovsky was bisexual. With Ginsberg's encouragement, Orlovsky began writing in 1957 while the pair were living in Paris. Accompanied by other beat writers, Orlovsky traveled extensively for several years throughout the Middle East, Northern Africa, India, and Europe. He also helped produce and contributed vocals to Ginsberg's 1970 LP ''

Songs of Innocence and Experience ''Songs of Innocence and of Experience'' is a collection of illustrated poems by William Blake. It appeared in two phases: a few first copies were printed and illuminated by Blake himself in 1789; five years later, he bound these poems with a ...

'', based on

William Blake William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. ...

's poetry collection of the same name. Orlovsky was Ginsberg's lover in an open relationship until Ginsberg's death in 1997. In 1974, Orlovsky joined the faculty of the

Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is a school of Naropa University, located in Boulder, Colorado, United States. It was founded in 1974 by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman, as part of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s 100-year experim ...

at the

Naropa Institute Naropa University is a private university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1974 by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa, it is named for the 11th-century Indian Buddhist sage Naropa, an abbot of Nalanda. The university describes itself as ...

Boulder, Colorado Boulder is a home rule city that is the county seat and most populous municipality of Boulder County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 108,250 at the 2020 United States census, making it the 12th most populous city in Color ...

, teaching poetry. In 1979 he received a $10,000 grant from the

National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...

to continue his creative endeavors.

Death

In May 2010, friends reported that Orlovsky, who had had

lung cancer Lung cancer, also known as lung carcinoma (since about 98–99% of all lung cancers are carcinomas), is a malignant lung tumor characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissue (biology), tissues of the lung. Lung carcinomas derive from tran ...

for several months, was moved from his home in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, to the Vermont Respite House in Williston. He died there on May 30, 2010, from complications of the disease; he was 76 years old. He was buried at

Shambhala Mountain Center Drala Mountain Center was formerly known as Shambhala Mountain Center. It was renamed in 2022, several years after widespread clergy sexual misconduct became publicly known. Drala Mountain Center was also previously known as Rocky Mountain Dharm ...

Red Feather Lakes, Colorado Red Feather Lakes is an unincorporated town, a post office, and a census-designated place (CDP) located in and governed by Larimer County, Colorado, United States. The CDP is a part of the Fort Collins, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area. The Red ...

. His epitaph reads: "Train will tug my grave, my breathe hueing gentil vapor between weel & track".

Poetry

* ''Dear Allen, Ship will land Jan 23, 58'' (1971) * ''Lepers Cry'' (1972) * ''Clean Asshole Poems & Smiling Vegetable Songs'' (1978) (reprinted 1992) * ''Straight Hearts' Delight: Love Poems and Selected Letters'' (with Allen Ginsberg) (1980) * ''Dick Tracy's Gelber Hut und andere Gedichte'' (German translation) (1984) * ''Sauber abgewischt'' (German translation by Marcus Roloff) (2020) His work has also appeared in ''

The New American Poetry 1945–1960 ''The New American Poetry 1945–1960'' is a poetry anthology edited by Donald Allen and published in 1960. It aimed to pick out the "third generation" of American modernist poets, and included quite a number of poems fresh from the little magazin ...

'' (1960), ''The Beatitude Anthology'' (1965), as well as the literary magazines ''Yugen'' and ''Outsider''. Orlovsky appeared in four films:

Andy Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationsh ...

's ''Couch'' (1965) and in three films by photographer

Robert Frank Robert Frank (November 9, 1924 – September 9, 2019) was a Swiss photographer and documentary filmmaker, who became an American binational. His most notable work, the 1958 book titled ''The Americans'', earned Frank comparisons to a modern-da ...

, ''Pull My Daisy'' (1959) (a partly improvised 26-minute-long film based on a Kerouac script), ''Me and My Brother'' (1969) (a film documenting his brother Julius Orlovsky's mental illness) and ''C'est Vrai! (One Hour)'' a 60-minute, one-take video made for French television in 1992 whose text was published as a volume in the Hanuman Books series.

Filmography

* ''

Pull My Daisy ''Pull My Daisy'' is a 1959 American short film directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, and adapted by Jack Kerouac from the third act of his play, '' Beat Generation''. Kerouac also provided improvised narration. It features poets Allen ...

'' (1959) * ''

Chappaqua Chappaqua ( ) is a hamlet and census-designated place in the town of New Castle, in northern Westchester County, New York, United States. It is approximately north of New York City. The hamlet is served by the Chappaqua station of the Met ...

'' (1966) * '' Me and My Brother'' (1969) * '' C'est Vrai! (One Hour)'' (1990)

Notes

References

*Charters, Ann (ed.). ''The Portable Beat Reader''. Penguin Books. New York. 1992. (hc); (pbk) *Inside Llewyn Davis, The Coen Brothers (2013)

External links

Archival collections

Peter Orlovsky Papers
at the

Rare Book & Manuscript Library The Rare Book & Manuscript Library is principal repository for special collections of Columbia University. Located in New York City on the university's Morningside Heights campus, its collections span more than 4,000 years, from early Mesopotam ...

Peter Orlovsky's papers
at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin *Materials related to Peter Orlovsky in th
Robert A. Wilson collection
held by th
Special Collections, University of Delaware

Other resources

*

in ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'' by

Marcus Williamson Marcus Williamson is a British writer, journalist and campaigner. As an obituarist for ''The Independent'' he has written obituaries of more than 300 subjects, including artists, poets, actors and inventors. Campaigns Phorm In 2009 the AIM-l ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Orlovsky, Peter 1933 births 2010 deaths American male poets Beat Generation writers Bisexual writers American writers of Russian descent American LGBT poets Writers from New York City Deaths from lung cancer Deaths from cancer in Vermont 20th-century American poets American expatriates in France LGBT people from New York (state) 20th-century American male writers Columbia University alumni