This chapter explores the many ways Mexico became central in Ginsberg’s poetic evolution. Inspired by the example of his mentor, William S. Burroughs, Ginsberg visited several archaeological sites in Mexico such as Palenque, which inspired one of his most successful early poems, “Siesta in Xbalba.” Ginsberg traveled widely throughout the country and continued the mystical quest which began with his experience of “cosmic consciousness” in Harlem in 1948 as he read the poetry of William Blake. In poems such as “Paterson,” Ginsberg wrote that he “would rather go mad, gone down the dark road to Mexico, heroin dripping/in my veins,/eyes and ears full of marijuana, /eating the god Peyote…” than endure his life in America. Ginsberg read widely in the history of culture of Mexico, and his poems as well as his journals reveal the profound effect Mexico would have on his life and work.

This chapter analyses some of the most salient examples of science fiction television produced before the Thatcher era, arguing that generic science fiction television in the 1970s, the decade before Thatcher’s election, aligns itself in broad terms with modernist ideas about technological and teleological progress – the advancement of humanity; the faith in, and simultaneous dread of, technology – as well as simplified moral positions assuming a certainty and objectivity. But this chapter also shows that the moral dilemmas more commonly faced by characters in the 1980s are beginning to surface here. On ITV the spectre of ‘Americanisation’ was beginning to loom, while on the BBC science fiction was treated with a more aloof attitude. In both cases, however, there is a stable hierarchy, with the authority of the middle-class white man at the apex. There is an ethos of collectivism found in most of the series here: people work in teams, and rarely is the individual prized over the group. This reflects the social-democratic nature of the post-war consensus era. The authority of the white male leader, seen as benign, is largely taken as axiomatic. This was to radically alter in the Thatcher era, buckling under the pressure of what Stuart Hall called the ‘authoritarian populism’ that these Thatcherite series negotiate.

Overshadowed by other international journeys, Ginsberg’s six months traveling alone through South America in 1960 have been relatively neglected by biographers and critics. However, recent editions and new research enable a better understanding of the literary and political significance of his geographic and drug trips in the region. The long-delayed publication of his South American Journals in 2019 reveals how prescient Ginsberg was to see the visionary value of ayahuasca (aka yagé), the indigenous psychedelic, set against the policing of reality by a materialistic world. His journals also show the full extent of his spiritual crisis in South America and his difficulties in finding a poetic form to express his experiences. Although The Yage Letters has been neglected by Ginsberg scholars, the complex backstory of the book of South American trips he coauthored with William S. Burroughs reveals a much greater role in its creation.

Allen Ginsberg read, reread, and approached the work of Walt Whitman throughout his life. How should we understand the overtly acknowledged relationship between these two poets? This chapter suggests that at the same time as one can trace the references Ginsberg makes to Whitman in his poems, compare and contrast the focus of each, or consider the parallels between the poetics of the two, we can also understand (the sometimes unsavory) Whitman in the (sometimes unsavory) Ginsberg canon as a screen onto which Ginsberg projected his ideas of his own literary ethos and significance.

This chapter deals with Allen Ginsberg's enormous personal archive. It includes the history of how the archive was created, what the contents of the archive are, and how it came to be located in the Special Collections Department of Stanford University's library. It details some of the many uses of the archive today and in the future.

Carpentier worked in radio broadcasting for more than twenty years, during the golden age of radio in the 1930s through the 1950s. He was a pioneer in thinking about the wireless reproduction of sound and music and worked collaboratively with many noted musicians and writers of his time. This chapter charts Carpentier’s poetics of sound as he formulated it in his articles on radio and radio scripts. It also studies two soundscapes that would appear in Carpentier’s posthumous memoir Recuento de moradas, and in his novel Concierto barroco. The chapter concludes by saying that the intermedial mingling, in his fiction of visual and soundscapes lent to Carpentier’s realist aesthetics a unique quality of verisimilitude.

This chapter examines Allen Ginsberg’s life-long relationship to education through an exploration of his formative years in both high school and at Columbia University in New York, his founding of the Jack Kerouac School at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, with Anne Waldman as well as his work teaching at Brooklyn College, and finally the legacy of his writing as it continues to be taught. Ginsberg always had a scholarly disposition, and thus it comes as little surprise that he was an award-winning student in high school. This success continued into his Columbia years, though his education expanded outside the classroom to include a “Beat” underworld that introduced him to illicit substances and clandestine texts. While he left the university to pursue poetry, he reentered it later in life to teach, with Buddhism being a key component of his pedagogy, especially at Naropa. While not everyone was a fan of Ginsberg’s pedagogy, most found his heartfelt attempt to share his own thoughts, feelings, and ideas on his own favorite poets in the classroom to have been enlightening. This chapter concludes with a discussion of the problems and potential Ginsberg still holds as his controversial work enters the classroom today.

Bouyed up by a loan from Ann, Anne Lister now had a rush of entrepreneurial energy, employing male experts on her estate and consulting them about a water-wheel at Listerwick. With such a burst of economic activity at Shibden, local tongues again wagged about how exactly she was funding it all. This was heightened when their coalmining rivals, the Rawsons, stirred up local opposition. This involved accusations of poisoning a well at Water Lane mill on the industrial edge of Halifax, inherited by Ann Walker. Stories reached Shibden that ‘Mr Rawson set the people on…and the people burnt Ann and me in effigy’. Matters grew even more torrid when Anne Lister was told that Rawson’s men had been burning devil’s dung, to smother her master miner out of the Walker pit.