Allen Ginsberg's Journals From Mexico City to Havana

At Literary Hub, Michael Schumacher introduces an excerpt of Iron Curtain Journals (University of Minnesota Press, 2018), the first installment of three in a series of Allen Ginsberg's unpublished travel journals. "Recent months had primed Ginsberg for his visits to totalitarian regimes. Censorship . . . stood front and center in his activities," writes Schumacher, who edited the book. The entries here start in Mexico City, before the poet flies to Havana. An excerpt of the excerpt:

How green the Zocalo! And there is life again! A garden, the iron benches in the grass, large leafed plants upspringing like friendly green dogs—a place to sit quiet at night—

The smell, Mex Tabac and detritus and tropic rank earth perfume— which I smelt as I stept from the plane—Naked Lunch’s benches, where the old tragic Garver draped his dying bones & is begone—and now another happy lifetime I walk into the park—and the workers boys with transistors pass on the red tiled footpath with the tinkle of guitars and the hurp of buses’ harp machinery on the busy street, the night’s quieted us all to a calm smile.

Lovely the colored tile houses set up under the snaky boughed palms. And that light in the trees transparent green trembling sharp leaves.

Coughing fatigued walked to Calle Guerrero, like College St. Calcutta—Bought codinettas and ate a sausage with tacos and walked on to a bright lit chicken soup all-nite restaurant, and stopped also for 8 cents huge glass of Papaya juice. Then to Hotel Ibero near an open air carnival and taxicab whore bar, and washed and slept.

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