Coming clean about dirty old poets

In response to some mail referring to William S. Burroughs as a "dirty old poet," the folks at The AWL decided to set the record straight: Burroughs, along with Allen Ginsberg and company, were indeed smarmy and lecherous. Choire Sischa will forever have mixed feelings about the revered poets, considering they often exploited their status as literary rock stars to bed innocent and often damaged young boys and treat them as “disposable sex toys”:

But just like "free love" so often meant that "chicks" should stop being "uptight" and have sex with whatever man wanted them to put out, fundamental to the whole post-beatnik and "groovy" literary and art scene of gay men was an idea that these, yes, old dudes came to think that it was their right to leverage their literary reputations to screw whichever troubled young boy most recently wanted their autograph . . . ”