Allen Ginsberg's Mind Writing Slogans
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
