Peter Orlovsky
Peter Orlovsky was an American poet and artist who gained recognition not only for his literary contributions but also for his long-term romantic relationship with renowned poet Allen Ginsberg. Born into a family facing financial difficulties, Orlovsky left school in his senior year to support himself and worked various jobs, including as an orderly at Creedmore State Mental Hospital. He was drafted into the Korean War but was later reassigned to a medical position due to his outspoken views against the military.
In 1954, he met Ginsberg, leading to a deep and enduring relationship that lasted until Ginsberg's death in 1997. Together, they explored their artistic passions, traveling widely and mingling with other notable figures of the Beat Generation. Orlovsky's poetry evolved over the years, culminating in several published works, including "Clean Asshole Poems and Smiling Vegetable Songs." He also contributed to the literary community as an educator at the Naropa Institute, teaching "Poetry for Dumb Students." Throughout his life, Orlovsky was active in progressive social causes, advocating for peace and nuclear disarmament, reflecting his commitment to social justice alongside his artistic pursuits.
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Peter Orlovsky
Poet
- Born: July 8, 1933
- Birthplace: New York, New York
- Died: May 30, 2010
- Place of death: Vermont
Biography
Peter Orlovsky, who would become as well known for his longtime romantic involvement with Allen Ginsberg as he would for his own poetic works, was one of the five children of Oleg Orlovsky, who printed silk screens for neckties, and Katherine (Schworten) Orlovsky. During Orlovsky’s teen years, his parents separated. With his mother and siblings, Orlovsky moved to Queens. With the family suffering financial problems, Orlovsky left school during his senior year of high school, and at age seventeen began working to support himself. He tried his hand at various jobs before becoming an orderly at New York’s Creedmore State Mental Hospital. While there, he completed work toward his high-school diploma.
At twenty years old, in 1953, Orlovsky was drafted into service in the Korean War, but the young man’s eccentricities as well as his obvious opposition to the military became apparent to supervisors at boot camp. Military psychiatrists transferred him to a San Francisco hospital, where he worked as a medic until July, 1954. In San Francisco, where he attended a junior college for two and a half years, Orlovsky moved in with romantic partner Robert LaVigne, a painter. Sometime in 1954, Orlovsky met Allen Ginsberg, a friend of LaVigne. The fateful meeting quickly led to an intimate relationship, and Orlovsky and Ginsberg moved in together, embarking on what they considered a marriage in the ways that matter around Christmas of 1954. Though the couple separated off and on and the relationship was not always monogamous, Orlovsky and Ginsberg remained vital parts of each other’s lives and continued their relationship until Ginsberg’s 1997 death.
Ginsberg and Orlovsky were living in Paris in 1957 when the famed poet began encouraging Orlovsky to explore his own poetic talents as well, and throughout the 1950’s, both men traveled widely, together as well as separately. Through Ginsberg, Orlovsky met and traveled with such Beat writers as Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, and his journeys took him around the world, though Orlovsky often cut the trips short to return to New York, where two of his brothers, who wrestled with mental struggles, resided.
When Orlovsky and Ginsberg settled back in the United States, they moved into a New York City apartment on the Lower East Side. Orlovsky briefly worked at the Peace Eye Bookstore in the 1960’s, and for much of the 1970’s, he absorbed himself in nature at a Cherry Valley farm, writing and growing his own food. In 1974, Orlovsky began teaching “Poetry for Dumb Students” in Boulder, Colorado, at the Naropa Institute’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.
The National Endowment for the Arts granted Orlovsky ten thousand dollars to support his creative output in 1979, one year after City Lights published Orlovsky’s Clean Asshole Poems and Smiling Vegetable Songs: Poems, 1957-1977, his third major solo publication. In 1981, twenty-seven years after Ginsberg and Orlovsky had first met, the two published a collaborative work: Straight Hearts’ Delight: Love Poems and Selected Letters, 1947-1980. Orlovsky was also committed to progressive social and political issues throughout the years and often engaged in pacifist and antinuclear causes.