W.S. Burroughs connection to the Beats

One of the most prominent figures who emerged out of the Beat Generation was William S. Burroughs, who is most famous for his novel Naked Lunch, which, as Dr. Wilson has said, received its title via Jack Kerouac's suggestion. Much of Burroughs’ work draws on his own life. In Naked Lunch, published in 1959, one year after The Dharma Bums, Burroughs writes about his opium, morphine, heroin, hash, etc. use, as well as his homosexual relations with young Moroccans in Tangiers.

Burroughs' poem, "A Thanksgiving Prayer," is extremely similar to Ginsberg's "America," both stylistically and in content. The poem was written by Burroughs on Thanksgiving in 1986, echoing bitter, ironic sentiments such as Ginsberg, but in an evenmore direct way. Burroughs was an expatriate/dharma bum of sorts (perhaps dharma of Epicurean ideals) for much of his life.

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"A Thanksgiving Prayer"

Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts.
Thanks for a continent to despoil and poison.
Thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger.
Thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin leaving the carcasses to rot.
Thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes.
Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until the bare lies shine through.
Thanks for the KKK.
For nigger-killin’ lawmen, feelin’ their notches.
For decent church-goin’ women, with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces.
Thanks for “Kill a Queer for Christ” stickers.
Thanks for laboratory AIDS.
Thanks for Prohibition and the war against drugs.
Thanks for a country where nobody’s allowed to mind the own business.
Thanks for a nation of finks.
Yes, thanks for all the memories— all right let’s see your arms!
You always were a headache and you always were a bore.
Thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.