Poet Henri Michaux boarded a ship for Ecuador in 1927 as "a man who knows neither how to travel nor how to keep a journal." The result is a work of pointed observation and sensual, even hallucinogenic, poetry and prose.

Henri Michaux was born into a wealthy Belgian family in 1899. Michaux disappointed his parents by dropping out of medical school to become a sailor. He sailed with the merchant marine throughout Asia and South America and eventually settled in Paris, where his poetry and later his paintings came to be widely admired. Michaux's works include Emergences-Résuregences, Darkness Moves: An Henri Michaux Anthology, 1927-1984, and A Barbarian in Asia. He died in 1984 in Paris.