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 .”
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