The Best Writing Tips Ever (?)

Interesting list of thoughts slogans on writing from Allan Ginsburg.

The first one from William Blake is really wonderful.

DEFINITIONS, A PREFACE (2/19/94)

Allen Ginsberg spent two decades teaching poetics at Naropa Institute, a half decade at Brooklyn College, and did occasional workshops at Zen Center & Shambhala/Dharmadhatu weekends. It's all been boiled down to brief mottoes from many sources found useful to guide myself and others in the experience of "writing the mind." --Peter Hale

ALLEN GINSBERG'S MIND WRITING SLOGANS

'First thought is best in Art, second in other matters.' --William Blake


I. GROUND (Situation, or Primary Perception)
  1. 'First Thought, Best Thought' --Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche

  2. 'Take a friendly attitude toward your thoughts.' --Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche

  3. 'The Mind must be loose.' --John Adams

  4. 'One perception must immediately and directly lead to a further perception.' --Charles Olson, 'Projective Verse'

  5. 'My writing is a picture of the mind moving.' --Philip Whalen

  6. Surprise Mind --Allen Ginsberg

  7. 'The old pond, a frog jumps in, Kerplunk!' --Basho

  8. 'Magic is the total delight (appreciation) of chance' --Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche

  9. 'Do I contradict myself?

    Very well, then I contradict myself,

    (I am large. I contain multitudes.)' --Walt Whitman

  10. "...What quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature? ...Negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason." --John Keats

  11. 'Form is never more than an extension of content.' --Robert Creeley to Charles Olson

  12. 'Form follows function.' --Frank Lloyd Wright

  13. Ordinary Mind includes eternal perceptions. --A.G.

  14. 'Nothing is better for being Eternal

    Nor so white as the white that dies of a day.' --Louis Zukofsky

  15. Notice what you notice. --A.G.

  16. Catch yourself thinking. --A.G.

  17. Observe what's vivid. --A.G.

  18. Vividness is self-selecting. --A.G.

  19. 'Spots of Time' --William Wordsworth

  20. If we don't show anyone we're free to write anything. --A.G.

  21. 'My mind is open to itself.' --Gelek Rinpoche

  22. 'Each on his bed spoke to himself alone, making no sound.' --Charles Reznikoff


    23. II. PATH (Method or Recognition)

  23. 'No ideas but in things.' '...No ideas but in the Facts.' --William Carlos Williams

  24. 'Close to the nose.' --W.C.Williams

  25. 'Sight is where the eye hits.' --Louis Zukofsky

  26. 'Clamp the mind down on objects.' --W.C.Williams

  27. 'Direct treatment of the thing...' (or object.)' --E.Pound, 1912

  28. 'Presentation, not reference...' --Ezra Pound

  29. 'Give me a for instance.' --Vernacular

  30. 'Show not tell.' --Vernacular

  31. 'The natural object is always the adequate symbol.' --Ezra Pound

  32. 'Things are symbols of themselves.' --Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche

  33. 'Labor well the minute particulars, take care of the little ones

    He who would do good for another must do it in minute particulars

    General Good is the plea of the Scoundrel Hypocrite and Flatterer

    For Art & Science cannot exist but in minutely organized particulars" --William Blake

  34. 'And being old she put a skin/On everything she said.' --W.B.Yeats

  35. 'Don't think of words when you stop but to see the picture better.' --Jack Kerouac

  36. 'Details are the Life of Prose.' --Jack Kerouac

  37. Intense fragments of spoken idiom, best. --A.G.

  38. 'Economy of Words' --Ezra Pound

  39. 'Tailoring' --Gregory Corso

  40. Maximum information, minimum number of syllables. --A.G.

  41. Syntax condensed, sound is solid. --A.G.

  42. Savor vowels, appreciate consonants. --A.G.

  43. 'Compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.' --Ezra Pound

  44. '...awareness...of the tone leading of the vowels.' --Ezra Pound

  45. '...an attempt to approximate classical quantitative meters...' --Ezra Pound

  46. 'Lower limit speech, upper limit song' --Louis Zukofsky

  47. 'Phanopoeia, Melopoeia, Logopoeia.' --Ezra Pound

  48. "Sight, Sound & Intellect." --Louis Zukofsky

  49. 'Only emotion objectified endures.' -- Louis Zukofsky


    50. III. FRUITION (Result or Appreciation)

  50. Spiritus = Breathing = Inspiration = Unobstructed Breath

  51. 'Alone with the Alone' --Plotinus

  52. Sunyata (Skt.) = Ku (Japanese) = Emptiness

  53. 'What's the sound of one hand clapping?' --Zen Koan

  54. 'What's the face you had before you were born?' --Zen Koan

  55. Vipassana (Skt.) = Clear Seeing

  56. 'Stop the world' --Carlos Casteneda

  57. 'The purpose of art is to stop time.' --Bob Dylan

  58. 'The unspeakable visions of the individual.' --J.K.

  59. 'I'm going to try speaking some reckless words, and I want you to try to listen recklessly.' --Chuang Tzu, (Tr. Burton Watson)

  60. 'Candor' --Whitman

  61. 'One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.' --Shakespeare

  62. "Contact" --A Magazine, Nathaniel West & W.C. Williams, Eds.

  63. "God Appears & God is Light

    To those poor Souls who dwell in Night

    But does a Human Form Display

    To those who Dwell in Realms of day.' --W. Blake

  64. Subject is known by what she sees. --A.G.

  65. Others can measure their visions by what we see. --A.G.

  66. Candor ends paranoia. --A.G.

  67. 'Willingness to be Fool.' --Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche

  68. "day & night/you're all right" --Corso

  69. Tyger: "Humility is Beatness." --Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche & A.G.

  70. Lion: "Surprise Mind" --Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche & A.G.

  71. Garuda: 'Crazy Wisdom Outrageousness' --Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche

  72. Dragon: 'Unborn Inscrutability' --Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche

  73. 'To be men not destroyers' --Ezra Pound

  74. "Speech synchronizes mind & body." --Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche

  75. "The Emperor unites Heaven & Earth." --Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche

  76. 'Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.' --Shelley

  77. 'Make it new' --Ezra Pound

  78. 'When the mode of music changes, the walls of the city shake' --Plato

  79. 'Every third thought shall be my grave' --W. Shakespeare, 'The Tempest'

  80. 'That in black ink my love may still shine bright' --W. Shakespeare, Sonnets

  81. 'Only emotion endures' --Ezra Pound

  82. 'Well while I'm here I'll

    do the work--

    and what's the Work?

    To ease the pain of living.

    Everything else, drunken

    dumbshow.' --A.G.

  83. '...Kindness, sweetest

    of the small notes

    84. in the world's ache,

    most modest & gentle

    of the elements

    entered man before history

    and became his daily

    connection, let no man

    tell you otherwise.' --Carl Rakosi

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