Peter Orlovsky, who inspired Beat writers like Allen Ginsberg, with whom he had a romantic partnership for decades, and who wrote emotionally naked, loopy and occasionally luminescent poetry of his own, died in Williston, Vt., on Sunday. He was 76, and lived in St. Johnsbury, Vt.

The cause was lung cancer, said Charles Lief, Mr. Orlovsky’s guardian. Mr. Orlovsky had diabetes and had struggled with drug and alcohol addiction for much of his life, Mr. Lief said.

Mr. Orlovsky was just 21, recently discharged from the Army and working as an artist’s model when he met Ginsberg in the San Francisco studio of the painter Robert LaVigne in December 1954.

The famous story of their meeting, the Ginsberg biographer Bill Morgan said in an interview, was that Ginsberg saw Mr. LaVigne’s portrait of Mr. Orlovsky and had already fallen in love with the subject when Mr. Orlovsky walked in.