Peter Orlovsky grave marker at Shambhala Mountain Center, Red Feather Lakes, CO. Poem excerpt on marker reads: Train will tug my grave, my breath hueing gentil vapor bewteen weel & track (Snail Poem, from Clean Asshole Poems & Smiling Vegetable Songs) Peter Orlovsky – Ocean of Generosity 1933-2010
Peter Orlovksy, 1010 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, Spring 1955. Photo. c. Allen Ginsberg Estate
Seems strange to note, today, one year since his passing. Gone but not forgotten. Dear Peter.
If you’d not seen it before, here is Steve Silberman’s Shambhala Sun article, “ Impossible Happiness: An Elegy for Peter Orlovsky ” – and here’s “ Peter Orlovsky: Namaste“, Tom Clark’s brief memoir. The Poetry Project at St Marks Church and our own Peter Hale organized, last October, a memorial reading (edited highlights, a montage of that evening, can be accessed here and, earlier, in the summer, Allen and Peter’s ashes were interred together in the Rocky Mountains in Colarado (near the base of Marpa Point, in sight of the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya).
Here are four of Peter O’s remarkable, unique, poems (and some notes on the poems) – “lest we forget”.
There's a longish poem of Kerouac's, imagining all his friends and family in heaven–Allen will be in ecstasies/Peter Amazed. It goes on like that…
Much love from Alison Burns