Peter Orlovsky, inspiration for Beat poet Ginsberg, dies

Peter Orlovsky, 76, a writer best known as a longtime muse, inspiration and companion of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, died Sunday of lung cancer at a respite care center in Williston, Vt.

Orlovsky and Ginsberg were partners for more than 40 years until Ginsberg's death from liver cancer in 1997. They met in San Francisco in 1954 and committed to each other in a ceremony held the following year.

"At that instant, we looked into each other's eyes," Ginsberg later recalled, "and there was a kind of celestial cold fire that crept over us."

Ginsberg would soon be launched to national attention for the profane and sexually explicit poem "Howl," for which his publisher was hauled into court on charges of obscenity. "Howl" helped make Ginsberg a hero of free-speech advocates, an anti-establishment cultural icon and the prolific poet laureate of Beat generation writers.

Orlovsky was credited with sparking Ginsberg's creative impulse.

Orlovsky was born on July 8, 1933, in Manhattan, one of five children. - AP