Bill Morgan

A Town and its PeopleBennington was the first town chartered in Vermont and has played a vital role in both the American Revolution and the founding of the state of Vermont. The town was also home to some very unique individuals who shaped the Green Mountain State. Ethan Allen, Robert Frost, Grandma Moses, Norman Rockwell, Shirley Jackson and William Lloyd Garrison have all called this area home at one time or another. The economic base of the town is rooted in the mills that once lined the banks of its rivers. Bennington pottery became one of the most popular styles of early American ceramics and is revered by antiquarians to this day. The Kiddie Car was invented and built in Bennington, and a large percentage of the stereoscopes used in every home a century ago came from factories in the area. A car beautiful enough to be driven by Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford was designed and built in town. Even one of the victims of the tragic Titanic disaster was a local man. No wonder that writers like Bernard Malamud and Dorothy Canfield Fisher were proud to spend their lives creating wonderful books here. Authors Bill Morgan and Tom Fels reveal the stories behind the names.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet and Beat publisher, could hardly seem more different from Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, yet the two men not only respected one another but were friends and collaborators over a period of a decade until Merton's untimely death.In Thomas Merton, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and the Protection of All Beings, Bill Morgan examines their friendship and shares their correspondence for the first time. He looks into the poetic projects they pursued and details their final meeting, shortly before Merton's passing, shedding new light on two of the most important writers of the 20th century.

Until now, the poet Peter Orlovsky, who was Allen Ginsberg's lover for more than forty years, has been the neglected member of the Beat Generation. Because he lived in Ginsberg's shadow, his achievements were seldom noted and his contributions to literature have not been fully recognised. Now, this first collection of Orlovsky's writings traces his fascinating life in his own words. It also tells, for the first time, the intimate story of his relationship with Ginsberg. Drawn from previously unpublished journals, correspondence, photographs and poems, Peter Orlovsky, a Life in Words, begins as Orlovsky is discharged from the Army; follows the young man through years of self-doubt and details his first meeting with Ginsberg in San Francisco from his own perspective. In never-before-heard detail, Orlovsky describes his travels around the world with Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs and Corso. The book also delves into the contradictions that ultimately defined him: best known as Ginsberg's lover, Orlovsky was heterosexual and always longed to be with women; his spirit was prescient of the flower children of the sixties - especially his inclinations toward devotion and love - but in the end his use of drugs took its toll on his body and mind, silencing one of the most original and inspiring voices of his generation.

OUR WOMEN ASTONISHED US Luke 24:18 And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?19 And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people: 20 And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him. 21 But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to day is the third day since these things were done.22 Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre; Women throughout history have been documented for doing many wonderful things Never underestimate the importance of a woman Without the women in the text above, we wouldn't have the witnesses to announce that our Saviour was not dead, but risen from the grave This was the good news that would extent throughout history to give hope to millions around the world. The curse of sin was broken and we could be reconciled to God forever. If only we believe. Bill Morgan was born in Nova Scotia, Canada. His last name unofficially changed 4 times from birth until age 10. He was officially adopted and given the last name, Morgan, at age 18. The promise of eternal life and peace convinced him to accept Jesus as His saviour in 1971. John 3:16 and Galatians 4:6 have become key truths in his life. Bill has been married to his Trinidadian Angel, Grace, since 1973. They now reside in Ontario, Canada, continuing work for God's Kingdom. Mother Teresa is his hero.

Through time-tested teachings and exercises, The Meditator's Dilemma shows you how to deepen your meditation practice while cultivating ease and delight--for both beginners and longtime practitioners. When practiced regularly, meditation naturally deepens self-awareness and leads to spiritual transformation. In our hyper, instant-gratification culture, however, most people miss out on those powerful outcomes because it's hard to commit to a longterm practice. Despite the increasing popularity of mindfulness and its documented mental health benefits, the silent majority of meditators struggle to maintain a regular practice. In fact, research indicates that more than fifty percent of meditators give up on the practice. This is the elephant in the meditation room. The Meditator's Dilemma, written by a psychologist with forty years' experience practicing and teaching meditation, confronts this problem and its causes and provides specific, accessible techniques and exercises that greatly enhance everyday meditation practice. Bill Morgan's teachings and guided meditation exercises are designed to generate the all-too-missing delight and enjoyment in meditation. The concept of the "holding environment," central to positive outcome in psychotherapy, is the raison d'etre for these techniques. In psychotherapy, the holding environment comprises the trusting, secure, empathic milieu created by the caring therapist. An indirect benefit of these techniques is the capacity to create a nurturing safe space in any relational context: with a mentor, in a conversation with a dear friend, or in a beautiful natural setting. When we are in a holding environment, we feel alive, connected, and relaxed. The Meditator's Dilemma teaches Western meditators to cultivate an internal holding environment that results in an attitude of relaxed curiosity and exploration toward their meditation practice, leading to greater success and staying power.

The Beat Generation is one of the great homegrown countercultures of the United States, but in fact its writers traveled widely and most of them lived abroad for periods of time. Their travels were a vital source of inspiration, and in turn they inspired literary scenes and kindred spirits around the globe. The writers we think of as "beat" first met in New York City in the 1940s and 50s, then joined up with others in San Francisco to form the group that became the "Beat Generation." By the 1960s their books had become seminal texts for America's counterculture, and many were being published in translation. As their travels brought them into contact with writers around the world, the Beats' influence spread far beyond the United States. In The Beats Abroad, renowned Beat scholar Bill Morgan documents that international phase of the Beat Generation's story. He delves deep into epicenters like Paris, Tangier, and Mexico City, and tracks down more remote locales from Siberia to Colombia. Entries contain specific addresses for the globetrotting reader to visit on every continent, and are loaded with fascinating stories that illuminate the lives and works of Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso, Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, and others. This handy reference lets the reader trace Ginsberg's trail through India, or find the hotel in Tangier where Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch, and much, much more.

Until now, the poet Peter Orlovsky, who was Allen Ginsberg's lover for more than forty years, has been the neglected member of the Beat Generation. Because he lived in Ginsberg's shadow, his achievements were seldom noted and his contributions to literature have not been fully recognised. Now, this first collection of Orlovsky's writings traces his fascinating life in his own words. It also tells, for the first time, the intimate story of his relationship with Ginsberg. Drawn from previously unpublished journals, correspondence, photographs and poems, Peter Orlovsky, a Life in Words, begins as Orlovsky is discharged from the Army; follows the young man through years of self-doubt and details his first meeting with Ginsberg in San Francisco from his own perspective. In never-before-heard detail, Orlovsky describes his travels around the world with Ginsberg, Kerouac, Burroughs and Corso. The book also delves into the contradictions that ultimately defined him: best known as Ginsberg's lover, Orlovsky was heterosexual and always longed to be with women; his spirit was prescient of the flower children of the sixties - especially his inclinations toward devotion and love - but in the end his use of drugs took its toll on his body and mind, silencing one of the most original and inspiring voices of his generation.

The people of Bennington often refer to the American Revolution as our war," as it was the site of the decisive Battle of Bennington. Yet more than one thousand Bennington boys fought in the Civil War, and residents on the homefront played their parts to support the United States, too. All the machinery used to produce gunpowder and nearly all the horseshoes for the United States Army were manufactured in Bennington, and a Bennington native was instrumental in the building of the USS "Monitor. "Mrs. Jefferson Davis visited friends in Bennington shortly after the war, and two Medal of Honor winners lived here as well. In this book, historian Bill Morgan unveils the important ways that Bennington helped preserve the United States during the Civil War."

A companion to our guides to San Francisco and New York, Beat Atlas: A Guide to the Beat Generation in America is a state-by-state guide to the rest of the nation's significant Beat locales. From Jack Kerouac's Lowell to William Burroughs' Lawrence, Kansas, to Neal Cassady's Denver--and everywhere in between--Beat Atlas contains a wealth of historical information subdivided by region and state for easy reference and is illustrated with photographs by Allen Ginsberg. Written by Ginsberg biographer and Beat authority Bill Morgan, and rich with literary lore, Beat Atlas makes an ideal companion for armchair travelers as well as those "on the road."

"As a pandemic rages and we are unable to gather to celebrate our dead, make our minyans, or hold one another’s hands, have our seders, I think of Ginsberg writing Kaddish for his mother. I think of him imagining a journey from bondage to freedom. . . . Kaddish is the perfect poem for these times."—Laurel Brett, The ForwardAllen Ginsberg's "Kaddish," a poem about the death of his mother, Naomi, is one of his major works. This special fiftieth anniversary edition of Kaddish and Other Poems features an illuminating afterword by Ginsberg biographer Bill Morgan, along with previously unpublished photographs, documents, and letters relating to the composition of the poem.Allen Ginsberg, founding father of the Beat Generation, inspired the American counterculture of the second half of the twentieth century with his groundbreaking poems. Bill Morgan is the author of I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg. He lives in New York City and Bennington, Vermont."In the midst of the broken consciousness of mid-twentieth century suffering anguish of separation from my own body and its natural infinity of feeling its own self one with all self, I instinctively seeking to reconstitute that blissful union which I experience so rarely. I took it to be supernatural and gave it holy Name thus made hymn laments of longing and litanies of triumphancy of Self over mind-illusion mechano-universe of un-feeling Time in which I saw my self my own mother and my very nation trapped desolate our worlds of consciousness homeless and at war except for the original trembling of bliss in breast and belly of every body that nakedness rejected in suits of fear that familiar defenseless living hurt self which is myself same as all others abandoned scared to own unchanging desire for each other."—Allen Ginsberg from Kaddish"Kaddish, Ginsberg's ode to his mother after her death, is streaked with references to Judaism and to the funerary prayer recited by a male mourner for the passing of a parent or relative. Like the prayer, Ginsberg’s poem is a celebration of his mother, but it also delves into—and, indeed, dwells on—the darker side of her life. . . . Ginsberg bears witness to his mother's pain and struggles; he intones her name—another act of remembrance—over and over again as if to deify her."—Maria Eliades, Ploughshares"Kaddish, Allen Ginsberg's most stunning and emotional poem, tells a story that is entirely true. As a young boy growing up in Paterson, New Jersey, Allen watched his mother succumb to a series of psychotic episodes that grew progressively worse despite desperate attempts at treatment."—Levi Asher, Literary KicksKaddish, which Ginsberg wrote between 1957 and 1959 and published in 1961, is, at its core, a poem about a son learning to grieve for his mother. But Ginsberg's emotional and intellectual rawness make this poem an investigation about what it means to grieve, or even to be a son or mother. A deeply intimate portrait of his family's life, Kaddish nonetheless embeds itself in specific historical contexts: of Jewish life in the United States and after the Holocaust, of left-wing political activism before and during the Cold War, of a fiercely independent woman who died as second-wave feminism was only just beginning to be formulated."—Joshua Logan Wall, The Yiddish Book Center's "Great Jewish Books, Teacher Resources" "Ginsberg’s long, graphic, lamenting elegy for his mother is one of the most shattering poems written in this century. Harrowing. Grotesque. Hilarious. Non-stop in its verbal energy....I love these little City Lights collections—they’re certainly more fun than the big Collected Poems (Harper), easier to carry, easier to hold, and easier to read."—Lloyd Schwartz, Grolier Poetry Book Shop

Presents an anthology of Ginsberg's earliest poems and journal entries, discussing his first encounters with lifelong friends Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, his experimentation with drugs, and his struggle to come to terms with his homosexuality. Reprint.

In the first biography of Ginsberg since his death in 1997 and the only one to cover the entire span of his life, Ginsberg's archivist Bill Morgan draws on his deep knowledge of Ginsberg's largely unpublished private journals to give readers an unparalleled and finely detailed portrait of one of America's most famous poets. Morgan sheds new light on some of the pivotal aspects of Ginsberg's life, including the poet's associations with other members of the Beat Generation, his complex relationship with his lifelong partner, Peter Orlovsky, his involvement with Tibetan Buddhism, and above all his genius for living.

Fabulous letters from the vagabond Beat poet to his friendsamong them Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. For all his charm and intelligence poet Gregory Corso lived a vagabond life. He never held down a regular job. He rarely stayed very long under the same roof. He spent long stretchessome as long as four or five yearsabroad. Many of his letters came from EuropeFrance, England, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Greeceas he kept in touch with his circle of friendsamong them his best friend Allen Ginsberg and a steady supporter, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He left (or was left by) a number of girlfriends and he fathered five children along the way. He was apt to raise a bit of a ruckus at poetry readings and other public events. No one could be sure what he might do next except that he would write poetry and get it published and that it would be widely read. When the idea of a book of selected letters was first proposed, Gregory had some reservations about it. Would the book reveal too much of his private life? But then with typical hubris he said the equivalent of "let it all hang out" and "all" does hang out in An Accidental Autobiography. The book is indeed the next thing to an unplanned self-portrait and gives a lively sense of the life Gregory Corso led, marching to his own drummer and leaving in his wake such marvelous books of Beat poetry as The Happy Birthday of Death, Elegiac Feelings American, Long Live Man, and Herald of the Autochthonic Spirit. Bill Morgan, who is extremely conversant with the Beats, has done an admirable job collecting letters from libraries and various individuals across the country and then selecting and organizing them in a progression that spans Corso's lifetime. In addition to Morgan's introduction and commentary, the book includes a special foreword by poet and rock star Patti Smith as well as a number of photographs.

A blow-by-blow unearthing of the places where the Beat writers first came to full bloom: the flat where Ginsberg wrote "Howl;" Gary Snyder's zen cottage in Berkeley; the ghostly railroad yards where Kerouac and -Cassady toiled; the pads where Jack & Neal & Carolyn lived; Ferlinghetti's favorite haunts. This meticulous guide also brings to light never-before-heard stories about Corso, Bob Kaufman, DiPrima, Kyger, Lamantia and other West Coast Beats. A entertaining read as well as a practical walking (and driving) tour that covers the entire Bay Area. With an introduction by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Bill Morgan is a painter and archival consultant working in New York City. He is the author of The Beat Generation in New York: A Walking Tour of Jack Kerouac's City.

Set off on the eternal trail of the Beat experience in the city that inspired many of Jack Kerouac's best-loved novels including On the Road, Vanity of Duluoz, The Town and the City, and Desolation Angels. This is the ultimate guide to Kerouac's New York, packed with photos of the Beat Generation and filled with undercover information and little-known anecdotes. Eight easy-to-follow walking tours guide you to: Greenwich Village bars and cafes where Kerouac and his friends Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, William Burroughs, Diane di Prima, Gregory Corso, Hettie and LeRoi Jones, John Clellon Holmes, Joyce Johnson, and others read poetry, drank, turned-on, and talked all night long. The Chelsea-district apartment where Jack wrote On the Road. Midtown clubs where Beat poets mingled with artists Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and listened to jazz and blues greats Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Billie Holiday. Times Square, a magnet for Kerouac and the Beats. Columbia University, where the original Beats first met and began a revolution in American literature and culture. Each tour includes a map of the neighborhood, subway and bus information, and an insider's angle on Jack Kerouac's life in New York. A must for Beat enthusiasts and critics. Bill Morgan is a painter and archival consultant working in New York City. His previous publications include The Works of Allen Ginsberg 1941-1994: A Descriptive Bibliography and Lawrence Ferlinghetti: A Comprehensive Bibliography. He has worked as an archivist for Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, and Timothy Leary.