Monday, May 23, 2011

Fabrieksgeheime: 3 digters gee raad

Michael Donaghy (1954 - 2004)

A few tips by Michael Donaghy


1. Copy the masters, use the structure of a poem you love, see how it works by making one yourself.


2. Beginning poets should try writing in metre, in iambic pentameter, the quintessential English line.


3. Poetry is about sound.


4. Use rhetorical devices. His favourite in class was chiasmus, the reversal, as in: .”Who only by moving can balance,/Only by balancing move .”


5. Good things come in threes.


6. .”This line seems to bring everything together… that’s the exact centre of the poem… hmm….”


7. Rhyme is a device that can make an idea seem true. By marrying the sounds you seem to marry the sense as well.


8. If you are going to use rhyme, though, you must do it well: .”otherwise it’s like I came into the room stilt-walking and then fell on my face in front of you!.” Buy a rhyming dictionary and use it.


9. Evidence of craft increases our trust in the poet. Why trust someone who didn’t make any effort?


10. .”The windmills of your mind .” Never prescriptive, Michael would jump on this .” of an .” construction. Ezra Pound (.”the PT Barnum of modern poetry.”) had objected before him and he held it fast.


11. Once you’ve written it, it belongs to the reader. You have to butt out. It’s their poem now.


***



Allen Ginsberg, Poetry reading in London, 1965

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, Gelek Rinpoche


2. “Take a friendly attitude toward your thoughts .” – Chögyam Trungpa, Gelek 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, Gelek 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


12. Ordinary Mind includes eternal perceptions. – Allen Ginsberg



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. – Allen Ginsberg


16. Catch yourself thinking. – Allen Ginsberg


17. Observe what's vivid. – Allen Ginsberg


18. Vividness is self-selecting. – Allen Ginsberg


19. “Spots of Time.” – William Wordsworth


20. If we don't show anyone we're free to write anything. – Allen Ginsberg


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)


23. “No ideas but in things .” .”...No ideas but in the Facts .” – William Carlos Williams


24. “Close to the nose .” – William Carlos Williams


25. “Sight is where the eye hits .” – Louis Zukofsky


26. “Clamp the mind down on objects .” – William Carlos Williams


27. “Direct treatment of the thing.. .” (or object.).” – Ezra 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, Gelek 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 .”
        – William Butler 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. – Allen Ginsberg


38. “Economy of Words.” – Ezra Pound


39. “Tailoring.” – Gregory Corso


40. Maximum information, minimum number of syllables. – Allen Ginsberg


41. Syntax condensed, sound is solid. – Allen Ginsberg


42. Savor vowels, appreciate consonants. – Allen Ginsberg


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



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 .” – Jack Kerouac


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.” – Walt Whitman


61. “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin .” – William Shakespeare


62. “Contact.” – A Magazine, Nathaniel West & William Carlos 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 .”
         – William Blake

64. Subject is known by what she sees. – Allen Ginsberg


65. Others can measure their visions by what we see. – Allen Ginsberg


66. Candor ends paranoia. – Allen Ginsberg


67. “Willingness to be Fool .” – Chögyam Trungpa, Gelek Rinpoche


68. “day & night/you're all right.” – Gregory Corso


69. Tyger: “Humility is Beatness .” – Chögyam Trungpa, Gelek Rinpoche & Allen Ginsberg


70. Lion: “Surprise Mind.” – Chögyam Trungpa, Gelek Rinpoche & Allen Ginsberg


71. Garuda: “Crazy Wisdom Outrageousness.” – Chögyam Trungpa, Gelek Rinpoche


72. Dragon: “Unborn Inscrutability.” – Chögyam Trungpa, Gelek Rinpoche


73 . “To be men not destroyers.” – Ezra Pound


74. “Speech synchronizes mind & body .” – Chögyam Trungpa, Gelek Rinpoche


75. “The Emperor unites Heaven & Earth .” – Chögyam Trungpa, Gelek Rinpoche


76. “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world .” – Percy Bysche 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.” – William Shakespeare, “The Tempest.”


80. “That in black ink my love may still shine bright.” – William 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 .”
        – Allen Ginsberg

83. “...Kindness, sweetest

        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

        tell you otherwise .”

         – Carl Rakosi

***



Ezra Pound (1885 - 1972)


Do's and Don'ts from Ezra Pound


1. Language is an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought.


2. A narrative is all right as long as the narrator sticks to words as simple as dog, horse, sunset.


3. Use no superfluous word, no adjective which does not reveal something.


4. Don’t use such an expression as “dim lands of peace.” It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer’s not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol.


5. Go in fear of abstractions. Do not retell in mediocre verse what has already been done in good prose. Don't think any intelligent person is going to be deceived when you try to shirk all the difficulties of the unspeakably difficult art of good prose by chopping your composition into line lengths. . . .


6. Be influenced by as many great artists as you can, but have the decency either to acknowledge the debt outright, or to try to conceal it.


7. Use either no ornament or good ornament.


8. Poetry should be written at least as well as prose.


9. Don’t imagine that a thing will “go” in verse just because it’s too dull to go in prose.


10. When Shakespeare talks of the “Dawn in russet mantle clad” he presents something which the painter does not present. There is in this line of his nothing that one can call description; he presents.


11. Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising agent for a new soap.




Ezra Pound & Allen Ginsberg