I've been in publishing for more than 20 years, I've attended my fair share of writer's conferences and workshops, and in my experience, the poet Allen Ginsberg was one of the best writing teachers I ever encountered. What he cared most about in his students was authenticity, and over the years he developed a series of slogans--some of which he wrote, others he took from great poets and writers--to guide people on the path to developing a clear, true and strong voice.
I was lucky enough to know Allen during the last eight years of his life, and one day in his office, I think it was 1990, or 1991, he handed me his list of "Mind Writing Slogans." I was astonished, reading suggestions such as "Notice what you notice," by how closely they resembled instructions in what I would soon discover was Allen's deep meditation practice. In both meditation and in writing, Allen tried to help students learn to watch their mind and express their thoughts spontaneously in order to tap the spring of creativity that produced Ginsberg's greatest work.
I have been sharing these slogans with the writers I've worked with over the years in different publishing houses, and for many authors, they have acted as catalysts, breaking through anything from solving a structural conundrum to bringing a long case of writer's block to an end. When we started the books page, I contacted Ginsberg's literary estate to see if we could post the slogans, and happily, the answer was "yes."
We'd love to hear what you think of these, and if you find them useful.
Two decades' experiences teaching poetics at Naropa Institute, half decade at Brooklyn College, and occasional workshops at Zen Center & Shambhala/Dharmadhatu weekends have been boiled down to brief mottoes from many sources found useful to guide myself and others in the experience of "writing the mind." --Allen Ginsberg
ALLEN GINSBERG'S MIND WRITING SLOGANS
"First thought is best in Art, second in other matters." --William Blake
I. GROUND (Situation, or Primary Perception)
- "First Thought, Best Thought" --Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
Very well, then I contradict myself,
(I am large. I contain multitudes.)" --Walt Whitman
Nor so white as the white that dies of a day." --Louis Zukofsky
II. PATH (Method or Recognition)
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
III. FRUITION (Result or Appreciation)
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day." --W. Blake
do the work--
and what's the Work?
To ease the pain of living.
Everything else, drunken
dumbshow."--A.G.
of the small notes
in the world's ache,
most modest & gentle
of the elements
entered man before history
and became his daily
connection, let no man
Take a look at what else is going on in Allen Ginsberg's work.