Jim Morrison Reads Allen Ginsberg

In this 1969 photo — taken at L.A.’s Chateau Marmont by Art Kane — Doors frontman/poet Jim Morrison sits in a closet reading a book. I’ve tried to make out the title, but can’t. The cover looks as if it belongs in the City Lights Pocket Poets series that publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti started in 1955. If Morrison is reading a book from the series, my guess is PLANET NEWS by Allen Ginsberg, a 144-page collection published in 1968. (Morrison adored Ginsberg’s poetry.) A selection from the book is featured below.

I am a Victim of Telephone (Excerpt)
by Allen Ginsberg

…Always the telephone linked to all the hearts of the
world beating at once
crying my husband’s gone my boyfriend’s busted
forever my poetry was rejected
won’t you come over for money and please won’t you
write me a piece of bullshit
How are you dear can you come out to Easthampton we’re
all here bathing in the ocean we’re all so lonely
and I lay back on my pallet contemplating $50 phone 
bill, broke, drowsy, anxious, my heart fearful of
the fingers dialing, the deaths, the singing of
telephone bells
ringing at dawn ringing all afternoon ringing up
midnight ringing now forever.