Allen GinsbergBill Burroughs "impersonating a detective with magnifying glass in hand ... Sherlock Holmes, or shabby Chinese detective in Saigon ... look at that stain on the suit." He took photos of sky, boys, streets, then photos of these photos, by stages drawing forth essences, re-photographing images of boy-stuff or blue sky, here collaged under glass plates on his bureau. Some cut-up photos from magazines, left. Calligraphy on Wardrobe closet Burroughs' adaptation of Brion Gysin's brushwork. Tangier Summer 1961. Bill's words above, 1988.Allen GinsbergBill Burroughs "impersonating a detective with magnifying glass in hand ... Sherlock Holmes, or shabby Chinese detective in Saigon ... look at that stain on the suit." He took photos of sky, boys, streets, then photos of these photos, by stages drawing forth essences, re-photographing images of boy-stuff or blue sky, here collaged under glass plates on his bureau. Some cut-up photos from magazines, left. Calligraphy on Wardrobe closet Burroughs' adaptation of Brion Gysin's brushwork. Tangier Summer 1961. Bill's words above, 1988.
Allen GinsbergBill Burroughs and Jack Kerouac locked in Mortal Combat with Moroccan dagger versus broomstick clear on the couch—they had its hold still a full second which I steadied camera on back of chair. They’d known each other nine years by then. Jack came in from Richmond Hill he’d finished Maggie Cassady, Bill stayed with me in two room apartment consolidating Yage Letters, he’d sent over the year from Peru and Ecuador. 206 East 7th st. Apt 16 Manhattan, September-October 1953.
Allen GinsbergBill Burroughs was in love, you can see the pain in his eyes, the longing. Assembling _Queer_ mss. 1953. 206 E 7 St N.Y.C., 1953
Allen GinsbergJoanne Kyger (Snyder) & Gary Snyder Poet-Zen students, their little house, Nishi-Noyama-Cho, Kita-ku-Murasaki-No area of Kyoto, June 1963
Allen GinsbergPeter Orlovsky age 21 with our first car, old delivery truck "The Hearse," Telegraph Hill a block up from our apartment rooms 1010 Montgomery Street near Broadway Corner. We drove to Yosemite, the car cost $125. San Francisco 1955.
Allen GinsbergHugh MacDiarmid on his 81’st Birthday at home. Scotland 1973.
Allen GinsbergWm. S. Burroughs at Fire Escape Window, Bob Merims on couch 1953 New York.
Allen GinsbergJack Kerouac 1953 Seen through window sill lined with books, from Fire Escape 206 E. 7 St. N.Y.C. He was living or writing Subterraneans
Allen GinsbergWilliam S. Burroughs serious, sad lover's eyes, afternoon light in window, cover of just-published Ace Paperback Junkie in shadow propped on couch-back above right shoulder. Japanese kite against old hot-water-flat wallpaper. Finishing compilation of Yage Letters and Queer manuscript he visioned first Inter-zone "Market" routines looking out South window at fire escapes & clotheslines criss-crossing Lower East Side apartment house courtyards--sailed to Tangier in December. New York, Fall 1953.
Allen GinsbergGregory Corso Paris 1957, looking out his skylight 9 Rue Gît-le-Coeur. At this time he had completed Bomb and was "eliminating ""_Death_" & "_Clown_".
Allen GinsbergPoet Joanne Kyger in mirror, her husband Gary Snyder with notebook, Peter Orlovsky eating sweetcake, we stopped at Chai-wallah’s stand in hill countryside, maybe near Almora or Kausani or small railroad stop waiting train on Pilgrimage to ancient Buddhist sites, India February 1962.
Allen GinsbergGregory Corso, Paul Bowles, William Burroughs, behind him shades of Ian Summerville, Cambridge mathematics student, Bill’s cut-up tech assistant, and Michael Portman, eighteen-year-old Public School aristocrat admirer of _Naked Lunch_, the two staying in rooms adjacent to Bill’s, both early deceased — here under the wall of Bill’s garden. All took cameras out beneath blue sky, bright sunny day, Villa Muniria, Tangier August 1961.
Allen GinsbergJack Kerouac passing corner bar Avenue B & East 7th N.Y., we went out for a walk along Tompkins Park, September 1953
Allen GinsbergPeter Orlovsky in my room 1010 Montgomery Street looking tender and mad, hopeful & happy.
Allen GinsbergAl Sublette, & Peter Orlovsky as I first knew him 1955 S.F.
Allen GinsbergBob Donlon (Rob Donnelly, Kerouac’s Desolation Angels), Neal Cassady, myself in black corduroy jacket, Bay Area poets’ “Court Painter” Robert La Vigne & poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti in front of his City Lights Books shop, Broadway & Columbus Avenue North Beach. Donlon worked seasonally as Las Vegas waiter & oft drank with Jack K., Neal looks good in tee shirt, Howl first printing hadn’t arrived from England yet (500 copies), we were just hanging around, Peter Orlovsky stepped back off curb & snapped shot, San Francisco spring 1956.
Allen GinsbergGregory Corso Paris 1957 his attic 9 Rue-Gît-Le-Coeur with magic wand, Louvre postcards tacked to wall left, wooden angel kid on wire right, window on courtyard. Burroughs came to live a flight below, Peter Orlovsky & I had window on street two floors down, room with two burner gas stove – LeRoi Jones (Yugen magazine) and Irving Rosenthal (Chicago Review) wrote us from U.S. for poems, Gregory had “Marriage” ready, “Power,” “Army” & “Police” also. I began _Kaddish_, Peter “Frist Poem,” Burroughs shaping _Naked Lunch_. Madame Rachou, Concierge.
Allen GinsbergJoanne Kyger, poet, & her husband Gary Snyder holding umbrella, with priest from local temple connected with Gary's Daitoku-ji in Kyoto, home base for his Zen studies - we stayed over, wrote haikus in priest's family memento book, Joanne collected shiny pebbles, rainy day Sea of Japan, July 1963.
Allen GinsbergRobert LaVigne, painter at 1010 Montgomery Street, San Francisco 1955, see Levesque in _Desolation Angels_, Robert Browning in Big Sur. We all lived on Gough Street, later in Hotel Wentley. He lives & paints in Seattle 1988, great artist.
Allen GinsbergI couldn't get over his beauty, he allowed me to photograph him thus. Lance Hendrickson, Tangier 1961, was hitchhiking thru.
Allen GinsbergPeter Orlovsky by pond C.O.P. Farm Cherry Valley
Allen GinsbergNeal Cassady and his love of that year the star-cross’d Natalie Jackson conscious of their rôles in Market Street Eternity: Cassady had been prototype for Jack Kerouac’s 1950 _On the Road_ saga hero Dean Moriarty, as later in 1960’s he’d taken the driver’s wheel of Ken Kesey’s psychedelic-era day-glo painted Merry Prankster crosscountry bus “Further.” Neal’s illuminated American automobile mania, “unspeakably enthusiastic” friendship & erotic energy had already written his name in brightlit signs of our literary imaginations before movies were made imitating his charm. That’s why we stopped under the marquee to fix the passing hand on the watch, San Francisco, maybe March 1955.
Allen GinsbergMy front room 1010 Montgomery Street North Beach apartment wherein I wrote _Howl_ Part I, Peter Orlovsky's room down the hall past the kitchen in back, windows overlooking Telegraph Hill's roofs and Oakland Bay. Robert La Vigne's watercolor portrait of me in army-surplus jacket and Cézanne-like landscape pinned to wall above spittoon-shaped woven basket on mantel, fireplace lit. Bollinger books on shelf, letters and Essays of Ezra Pound under bed-table clock, checkered wool blanket hung over alley window first floor, black-painted bureau with victrola-case & Bach on top. "Blessed be the Muses / for their descent / dancing round my desk / Crowning my balding head / With laurel.” I was living on unemployment checks, San Francisco, Summer 1955.
Allen GinsbergA.G. & P.O. 5 Turner Terrace, Potrero Hill Housing Project, Peter's kitchen, hot summer day 1956.
Allen GinsbergBill Burroughs, more friendly + open than I realized at the time - 1953 - really pleased!
Allen GinsbergDr. Timothy Leary meeting Neal Cassady first time in Merry Prankster day-glo painted bus. Neal'd driven cross country and up-state to Dr. Leary's retreat at Millbrook N.Y. early in the Goldwater-Johnson Presidentiad. They'd come honking up the estate driveway to park by the big house Kesey & friends like a many-headed psychedelic loudspeaker'd rhinoceros in quiet woodlands recently raided by Assistant D.A. G. Gordon Liddy & local constabulary without search warrants looking for grass busts, L.S.D. still legal those years. Neal's scratching amphetamine itch in his driver's palm. Dr. Tim'd come outside to visit bus.
Allen GinsbergPeter O. sleeping in our small room Tangier 1961. Did "Sex Experiments" there.
Allen GinsbergBill must've said something funny from the floor, we were taking snapshots of each other on same couch, my $13.00 Kodak Retina pawn-shop camera in Burroughs' hands. He stayed in the apartment East 7th Street between Avenues B & C most of that Fall 1953.
Allen GinsbergBasil Bunting Summer 1973, we went from Bede's grave Durham Cathedral to a Northumbrian Churchyard where he preferred to be buried in time.
Allen GinsbergLouis Ginsberg in our house 416 East 34th Street Paterson, late 1950's?
Allen GinsbergNeal Cassady with cigarette young & vigorous age 29 with salesman surveying North Beach used car lot, he needed new wheels. Bay Area Johnny Appleseed of pot from early 1950’s, he worked as conductor on Southern Pacific Railroad, averted train crash as brakeman years earlier, breaking his ankle, collected insurance, bought his family a ranch-house in Los Gatos down the peninsula, gambled madly & disastrously at horse racetrack, wrote painfully in pencil on his “The First Third” autobiographical manuscript, visited me overnight in rooms on Polk and Montgomery Streets, San Francisco, sometime March 1955.
Allen GinsbergWilliam S. Burroughs beside typewriter on kitchen table, getting in condition to edit his South American "Yage Letters" and "Queer" epistolary mss. to be published decades afterward - immortality comes later! We slept in striped wallpaper'd tiny rear bedroom, my wooden wardrobe visible behind his shoulder. 206 East 7th Street, Apartment 16, Lower East Side Manhattan October 1953.
Allen GinsbergGregory Corso musing on cot in room Peter Orlovsky & I shared in Tangier 1961 - we interviewed each other and Burroughs for first issue of City Lights Journal for Protection of All Beings, lots of talk.
Allen GinsbergJerry Heiserman (later Sufi "Hassan"), the car whose? Dan McCloud (later editor of _Georgia Strait_ under-ground paper), Allen Ginsberg, Bobbie Louise Hawkins Creeley, Professor Warren Tallman our host, Robert Creeley above big Charles Olson. Seated below left, Thomas Jackrell (student poet who wrote about Campbell’s Soup Cans), Philip Whalen poet, and postmodern poetics editor Don Allen- in front of Tallman's house- he'd sent me ticket to return round world after year-and-half in India for Vancouver B.C. Canada University Poetry Conference, last days of July 1963.
Allen GinsbergGregory Corso and myself double-portrait Siamese poetry twins, my whitewashed-walled room in Tanger, 1961. Peter Orlovsky held camera?
Allen GinsbergPaul Bowles preparing mint tea on our arrival at the market area souk center of the medina, we took train from Tangier, stayed a week in his travel friend Christopher Wanklyn's household, Marrakech, Morocco, July 20, 1961
Allen GinsbergKorean War Vet Ken Babbs, Captain of Ken Kesey's "Trips Festival" bus, co piloting Neal Cassady on Amphetamine at wheel rolling up highway to Millbrook estate near Poughkeepsie N.Y. where Dr. Tim O'Leary's Castalia Foundation was then experimenting with D.M.T. on half hour psychedelic trip useful for psychiatric sessions. Burglar Gordon Liddy, then assistant D.A. in Poughkeepsie raided the Foundation a number of times illegally lacking search warrants during that season, so Castalia folk were jittery on arrival of honking Day-Glo graffit'd "Merry Prankster" Further bus which'd been driven cross-country S.F to N.Y. via Texas before Fall 1964 Presidentiad, "A Vote for Goldwater is a Vote for Fun" logo painted above bus side windows, L.S.D. Kool-Aid in pitcher in icebox. Kesey & Pranksters had met with Jack Kerouac a day before . . .
Allen GinsbergSea of Japan, returning after year and half in India, six-week stopover in Japan travelling with Gary Snyder & wife Joanne Kyger, we supped at Zen Temple nearby, Snyder snorkelled, my Kodak Retina probably in Joanne’s hands, early July 1963.
Allen GinsbergLafcadio & Peter Orlovsky at kitchen table, Peter's apartment 5 Turner Terrace, a veteran's housing Project near a gigantic gas tank on Potrero Hill. 23 year old Peter brought Lafcadio, age 15, to Bay Area to stay with us, relieve his mother Kate in Northport, L.I., where Lafcadio knew Kerouac, and had visions of becoming a millionaire (and building a private space-ship to get off Nuked Planet Earth to another world) by answering dozens & dozens of get-rich-quick home-sales ads ("Earn $800.00 a day selling special Fish-bait oil by Telephone!") in pulp magazines' back pages. next Laf quit Jr. High School to bicycle downtown S.F. for dishwashing job--"One of the best periods of his life, getting his first whiff of work, money, independence, he was sparking up, got three social security cards, the F.B.I. came round to investigate" . . .
Allen GinsbergGary Snyder Poet, scissors to beard 1965.
Allen GinsbergGary Snyder 1965 Northwest
Allen GinsbergKen Kesey—Merry Pranksters’ day-glo painted “Further” cross-country bus Neal Cassady’d driven S.F. to Manhattan, L.S.D. cool-aid pitcher in icebox for local hitchhikers and Police, here stopped for gas lunch upstate on trip to Timothy Leary’s Millbrook n.y. psychedelic research commune just before election time, “A Vote For Barry Is A Vote for Fun” logo painted large across bustop side, Goldwater the libertarian Republican would-be Presidential candidate Hawk during Vietnam War, summer 1964.
Allen GinsbergKodak-Retina snapshot by William Burroughs, living room 1953 Lower East Side, Jackson Mac Low portrait with recorder by Iris Brodey on wall. We were working on Bills S.A. letters. I had job on N.Y. World Telegram.
Allen GinsbergPeter Orlovsky Bill Burroughs and the inventor of the "Marl Hole," Dutch Tony's Cafe Medina Tangier, 1957. Third man- Paul Lund.
Allen GinsbergJack Kerouac with Wm. Burroughs’ cat in garden Villa Muniria. Jack had place upstairs from Bill 2 flights, French windows with spacious red-tiled veranda overlooking Tangier Bay and Gibraltar distant, rent 40$ a month or less. 1957.
Allen GinsbergMiguel Grinberg, Eco Contemporáneo editor, Buenos Aires, Havana Cuba before I got deported January 1965![Bill Burroughs in back bedroom waiting for company, he’d arrived from South America in August & we stayed together in my apartment till December working on _Yage Letters_ and _Queer_ manuscripts – Ace Books’d printed first paperback _Junky_ edition that Spring. “I come home from work [at N.Y. World- Telegram, newspaper copyboy] 4:45 and we talk till one A.M. or later . . . am all hung up in a great psychic marriage with him for the month —,” so I wrote to Neal Cassady, September 4, 1953., Allen Ginsberg, 1953, printed later](https://api.nga.gov/iiif/eb9c79bf-860b-4bb2-9f54-063d71f4fab3/full/!400,400/0/default.jpg)
Allen GinsbergBill Burroughs in back bedroom waiting for company, he’d arrived from South America in August & we stayed together in my apartment till December working on _Yage Letters_ and _Queer_ manuscripts – Ace Books’d printed first paperback _Junky_ edition that Spring. “I come home from work [at N.Y. World- Telegram, newspaper copyboy] 4:45 and we talk till one A.M. or later . . . am all hung up in a great psychic marriage with him for the month —,” so I wrote to Neal Cassady, September 4, 1953.
Allen GinsbergPeter Orlovsky legs crossed mysterious-haired, W.S. Burroughs with camera & hat shading Mediterranean sun, Myself white pants earnest, Alan Ansen...visiting from Venezia to help type new apocalyptic cut-up overflow material from Naked Lunch, Gregory Corso sunglasses & Minox’d, a gambler at casino, Ian Sommerville assisting sound-collage electronics & stroboscope alpha-rhythm. Dream Machine experiments with Bill B. & Brian Gysen then in town, Paul Bowles squinting in bright / mid-day light seated on ground, all assembled outside Bill’s single room, Villa Muniria Garden, / my camera in Michael Portman’s hands, Tangier March-July 1961.