pen ink river

...and the meaning will be there. That's an interesting thing to reflect on as I try to figure out this whole poetry meaning thing. Richard Hugo asks -- Is sound a guide to discover meaning in a poem or rather is meaning used as a way to justify the chosen sounds? How is it I have been working my own primitive journey to find my way back to the word?

I started writing Pilgrimage out of a desire to capture an epiphany moment, to find meaning in an experience that began as painful and ended (unexpectedly) in the profound. But from the start I chose poetry rather than narrative. From the start, I heard the word angel (not a word I use often) for the neighbor and that she was there, hovering -- I remember thinking of her as a benevolence -- and then the words, sounds -- the musical thread I guess -- flowed from trying to capture that. Then, by the time I got to the end of a few more drafts, sound had taken over, come into sharper relief. Not in an abstract, arbitrary way, but as a way to augment the meaning? the story? I'd already been trying to tell. So I guess in my poem this week, the inspiration, the intention, the triggering town was my unexpected meeting of the neighbor and the poem's real subject ends up being, as Mary Ann wrote to me, "I have the sense, however, that the “angel” is more helpful to the narrator than to the unseen person who killed himself."

Posted by Nancy Flynn at 06:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Found on the Naropa web site. Love these!

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" -Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
2. "Take a friendly attitude toward your thoughts." -Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
3. "The Mind must be loose." -John Adams
4. "One perception must immediately and directly lead to a further perception." -Charles Olsen, "Projective Verse"
5. "My writing is a picture of the mind moving." -Phillip Whalen
6. "Surprise Mind" -Allen Ginsberg
7. "The Old pond, the frog jumps in, Kerplunk!" -Basho
8. "Magic is the total delight (appreciation) of chance." -Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
9. "Do I contradict myself? very well, 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 Creely to Charles Olsen
12. "Form follows function." -Frank Loyd 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

II Path (method or recognition)

1. "No ideas but in things."..."No ideas but in facts." -William Carlos Williams
"Close to the nose." -W.C. Williams
3. Sight is where the eye hits." -Louis Zukofsky
4. "Clamp the mind down on objects." -W.C. Wiliams
5. "Direct treatment of the thing...(or object,)" -Ezra Pound
6. "Presentation, not reference." -Ezra Pound
7. "Give me a for instance." -Vernacular
8. "Show not tell." -Vernacular
9.
"The natural object is always the adequate symbol." -Ezra Pound
10. "Things are symbols of themselves." -Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
11. "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
12. "And being old she put a skin/ on everything she said." -W.B. Yeats
13. "Don't think of words when you stop but to see the picture better." -Jack Kerouac
14. Details are the life of prose." -Jack Kerouac
15. Intense fragments of spoken idiom, best. -A.G.
16. "Economy of Words" -Ezra Pound
17. "Tailoring" -Gregory Corso
18. Maximum information, minimum number of syllables. -A.G.
19. Syntax condensed, sound is solid. -A.G.
20. Savor vowels, appreciate consonants. -A.G.
21. "Compose in the sequence of musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome" -Ezra Pound
22. "...awareness...of the tone leading of the vowels." -Ezra Pound
23. "...an attempt to approximate classical quantitative meters..." -Ezra Pound
24. "Lower limit speech, upper limit song" -Louis Zukofsky
25. "Phanopoela, Melopoeia, Logopoela." -Ezra Pound
26. "Sight, Sound, Intellect." -Louis Zukofsky
27. "Only emotion objectified endures." -Louis Zukofsky

III Fruition (result or appreciation)

1. Spiritus = Breathing = Inspiration = Unobstructed Breath
2. "Alone with the Alone." -Plotinus
3. Sunyata (skt.) = Ku (Japanese) = Emptiness
4. "What's the sound of one hand clapping?" -Zen Koan
5. "What's the face you had before you were born?" -Zen Koan
6. Vipassana (skt.) = Clear Seeing
7. "Stop the world" -Carlos Casteneda
8. "The purpose of art is to stop time." -Bob Dylan
9. "The unspeakable visions of the individual." -J.K.
10. "I'm going to try speaking some reckless words, and I want you to try to listen recklessly." -Chuang Tzu, (Tr. Burton Watson)
11. "Candor" -Whitman
12. "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." -W. Shakespeare
13. "Contact" -A Magazine, Nathaniel West & W.C. Williams, Eds.
14. "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
15. Subject is known by what she sees. -A.G.
16. Others can measure their visions by what we see. -A.G.
17. Candor ends paranoia. -A.G.
18. "Willingness to be Fool." -Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
19. "Day & Night / you're all right." -Gregory Corso
20. Tyger: "Humility is Beatness." -Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche & A.G.
21. Lion: "Surprise Mind" -Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche & A.G.
22. Garuda: "Crazy Wisdom Outrageousness" -Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
23. Dragon: "Unborn Inscrutability" -Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
24. "To be men not destroyers" -Ezra Pound
25. "Speach synchronizes mind & body" -Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
26. "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world" -Shelley
27. "Make it new" -Ezra Pound
28. "When the mode of music changes, the walls of the city shake" -Plato
29. "Every third thought shall be my grave" -W. Shakespeare, The Tempest
30. "That in black ink love may still shine bright" -W. Shakespeare, Sonnets
31. "Only emotion endures" Ezra Pound
32. "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.
33. "...Kindness, sweetest
of the small notes
in the world's ache,
most modest & gentle
entered man before history
and became his daily
connection, let no man
tell you otherwise." -Carl Rakosi
34. "To diminish the mass of human and sentient sufferings." -Gelek Rinpoche

Posted by peninkriver at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Back at the desk, daily, working on assorted things. Playful poetry, mining prose about the Valley to turn into anthracite prose poems, and re-immersing myself in the project about G. I spent one morning last week looking back over seven years of insights culled from working with the creativity coach, from getting up and coming to this desk mostly day in and out. I wrote in 1998 or 1999: "A good day for me is about feeling heard and understood. It's about stimulation and connection." Interesting: so many themes surface again and again. Does that mean I'm dense, that it's taking me forever to make changes, or does it mean I'm incapable of change? Does it mean I knew a while back a better recipe for success for my writing life and I've been stubborn about embracing it? All I know is that the review was useful -- I feel like I've got a list of directives I should now tattoo on the inside of my left arm.

So for what it's worth, here's my new, improved writing wisdom list: what I've figured out, what I know works for me and also what trips me up. Over and over and over and over again. What I need, what would help me work better:

21st Century Nora O'Floinn Writing Wisdom List

-- Read poetry in the morning, start of my writing day.

-- Need audience. Write to someone, real or imagined.

-- Dare to write and complete first, messy drafts.

-- Assign prompts and homework. Perhaps a daily page number or word count?

-- Go deeply into fewer things.

-- Stop trying to force.

-- Limit travel and disruptions; expect transition time after they occur.

-- Don't discount my story: outsider, observing, often other.

-- So often desperate to be good at something, to be recognized, and seen as worthy.

-- I keep losing the laughter. Why?

Ancient Insights, from those longago 90s

-- My best work? Focused on the specific and the concrete.

-- Turn to writing exercises when my will, drive, and enthusiasm fail me.

-- Gossip and detective work often two keys to generating writing.

-- Stream of consciousness for prodding memories.

-- When I travel, my journal details are livelier, more interesting.

-- Still caring too much about outcomes.

-- Patience rather than forcing the words to come.

-- Too much fretting about getting the words "right."

-- Music heals, jolts free associations.

-- Explore artists who have creativity in multiples areas.

-- When I DO things, the writing is better.

-- Writing from a random poetry line? Generative for me.

-- When rigid about daily schedules, I freeze up.

Posted by Nancy Flynn at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)