William Burroughs

William Burroughs Poems

William Burroughs Biography

William Seward Burroughs II (pron.: /ˈbʌroʊz/; also known by his pen name William Lee; was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th century." His influence is considered to have affected a range of popular culture as well as literature. Burroughs wrote 18 novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays. Five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, and made many appearances in films. He was born to a wealthy family in St. Louis, Missouri, grandson of the inventor and founder of the Burroughs Corporation, William Seward Burroughs I, and nephew of public relations manager Ivy Lee. Burroughs began writing essays and journals in early adolescence. He left home in 1932 to attend Harvard University, studying English, and anthropology as a postgraduate, and later attending medical school in Vienna. After being turned down by the Office of Strategic Services and U.S. Navy in 1942 to serve in World War II, he dropped out and became afflicted with the drug addiction that affected him for the rest of his life, while working a variety of jobs. In 1943 while living in New York City, he befriended Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, the mutually influential foundation of what became the countercultural movement of the Beat Generation. Much of Burroughs's work is semi-autobiographical, primarily drawn from his experiences as a heroin addict, as he lived throughout Mexico City, London, Paris, Berlin, the South American Amazon and Tangier in Morocco. Finding success with his confessional first novel, Junkie (1953), Burroughs is perhaps best known for his third novel Naked Lunch (1959), a controversy-fraught work that underwent a court case under the U.S. sodomy laws. With Brion Gysin, he also popularized the literary cut-up technique in works such as The Nova Trilogy (1961–64). In 1983, Burroughs was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1984 was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France. Jack Kerouac called Burroughs the "greatest satirical writer since Jonathan Swift," a reputation he owes to his "lifelong subversion" of the moral, political and economic systems of modern American society, articulated in often darkly humorous sardonicism. J. G. Ballard considered Burroughs to be "the most important writer to emerge since the Second World War," while Norman Mailer declared him "the only American writer who may be conceivably possessed by genius." Burroughs had one child, William Seward Burroughs III (1947-1981), with his second wife Joan Vollmer. Vollmer died in 1951 in Mexico City. Burroughs was convicted of manslaughter in Vollmer's death, an event that deeply permeated all of his writings. Burroughs died at his home in Lawrence, Kansas, after suffering a heart attack in 1997.)

The Best Poem Of William Burroughs

Where Flesh Circulates

Its so hard to remember in the world - - Weren't you there? Dead so you

think of ports - - Couldn't reach flesh - - Might have to reach flesh from

anybody - -

And i will depart under the Red Masters

for strange dawn words of color exalting their

falling on my face impending attack satellite in a

Gold and perfumes of light city red stone

shadows brick terminal time wet dream flesh creakily the

the last feeble faces fountains play stale

spit from crumpled cloth Weimar youths on my face

bodies where flesh circulates Masters of color

exalting their dogs impending attack of light

unaware of the vagrant shadows on the Glass and Metal Streets

silver flying scanning patterns electric dogs

dark street life "Here he is now" staring out

from the dawn he strode toward the flesh jissom webs drifting

where identity scarred metal faces masturbating

"Who him?" spitting blood laugh on the iron afternoons

ejaculates wet dream flesh in red brick Terminal Time

red nitrous fumes under the orange gas flares

grey metal fall out on terminal cities

to the shrinking sky fading color sewage delta

caught in this dead whistle stop post card sky

dead rainbow flesh and copper pagodas flickered on the

in a city of red stone black skin work fish smell and

dead eyes in doorways red water words spitting blood laugh

sharp as water reeds fish syllables

stirring this Moroccan sunlight vagrant noon station

spent in the mirror dawn jissom webs drifting rainbow

speeded up from afternoon's slow ferris wheel flesh.

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