Clean Asshole Poems & Smiling Vegetable Songs

by Peter Orlovsky

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Genres: Poetry, Queer

144 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1978

About the author

Peter Orlovsky was an American poet best known for being the lover of Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg.

A high school dropout, he served as a stateside medic in the US Army during the Korean War. He met Ginsberg through the painter Robert La Vigne in San Francisco in December 1954. Orlovsky served as Ginsberg's secretary, traveled the world with him, and was his lover in an open relationship for four decades.

Reviews

[Mat]

Absolutely amazing. I am, quite frankly, astounded. Why was Peter not recognized as an important beat poet, like his peers Ginsberg and Corso were.
I have not read a more imaginative or beautiful book of beat poetry to date. Admittedly there isn't the depth of ideas or imagery to be found in Ginsberg and Corso's best verse or in Kerouac or Burroughs' best prose, but discovering Orlovsky's poetry has already made my day, if not my year.
If you are a fan of beat poetry, i urge you to seriously take time and read this.
Some very cool stuff here - for example, some of my favourite lines were, "i drink a whole bottle of wine with my eyes closed" (i think Bukowski would have liked that), "cigarette ashes dry up your tears" and "night has made lonely dances in your head" just to give you a few teasers.
very very highly recommended.

[Aaron]

Captivating poetry with some stellar lines. The spelling can often be distracting, shifting focus out of the poems, but still worth the read (even if the spelling jars you and makes you work a little more at reading the book). A holistic, gentle spirit is evoked here; it's not nearly as naughty as the title of the book makes it out to be. Enjoy.

[Teresa]

An instantly likable book of poems I found having never read anything of Peter Orlovsky’s before. The pieces are as strange as the title but by far some of the most interesting I’ve ever read with its intentional phonetic spellings. Orlovsky writes as he lived having had relationships with men and women alike. (A then college-aged Beat scholar/biographer to be Ann Charters once went on a blind date with him). Not for everyone for sure, but certainly of interest to any readers of the Beats.

[Brendan]

Rating: I'm clearly in the minority here, but I really don't see what other readers are seeing.

The intentional misspellings are so frequent and utterly pointless - it's not cool, it's annoying. He rambles a lot, as Ginsberg did. But the latter poet pulled it off better. Some of the material just didn't interest me - too silly or whatever. It kind of seems like his biography would be more interesting than his poetry.

Anyway...

"Lepers Cry" is far and away the best piece here. (about a visit to India in 1961)

Dreams it seems are a certain area of town we have never been in.
- "One Line Scrap Book"

A telephone call
a small light in the hall
a dream turning over in bed
smoke from my cigerette
all this has to be watched
when you work on the night shift
- "Morris"

[Matthew Stolte]

wonderful!

[T-bone]

Didn't live up to the fine title.

[Manda]

So good, I'm rethinking every second I was alive before giving Peter Orlovsky a read.