Additional information
by Allen Ginsberg (Author), Michael Schumacher (Editor)
"Ginsberg's South American Journals, which follow Allen during six months in 1960 to Chile and Peru for a literary conference (begun just days after the Cuban revolution). Ginsberg travels to Machu Picchu, and then deeper into remote regions of Peru, seeking a source for the mind-altering drug yage, which had been suggested to him by William S. Burroughs and that he wanted to share with Kerouac and others (the US government allowed him to bring a small quantity back). Ginsberg wrote more in his journals during these six months than during any other period of his life, from his contemplations on death to his intense visions while taking yage"--
Author Biography
Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) was born in Newark, New Jersey. As a student at Columbia College in the 1940s, he began a close friendship with William Burroughs, Neal Cassady, and Jack Kerouac, and he became associated with the Beat movement and the San Francisco Renaissance in the 1950s. After jobs as a laborer, sailor, and market researcher, he published his first volume of poetry, Howl and Other Poems, in 1956. "Howl" defeated censorship trials to become one of the most widely read poems of the twentieth century.
Michael Schumacher is author of Dharma Lion, the acclaimed biography of Allen Ginsberg, and editor of First Thought: Conversations with Allen Ginsberg and Iron Curtain Journals: January-May 1965 (all from Minnesota). He is also editor of The Essential Ginsberg.
