"First Thought is Best in Art, Second in Other Matters." William Blake
I Background (Situation, Or Primary Perception)
"First Thought, Best Thought" Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
"Take a friendly attitude toward your thoughts." Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
"The Mind must be loose." John Adams
"One perception must immediately and directly lead to a further perception." Charles Olson, "Projective Verse"
"My writing is a picture of the mind moving." Philip Whalen
Surprise Mind Allen Ginsberg
"The old pond, a frog jumps in, Kerplunk!" Basho
"Magic is the total delight (appreciation) of chance." Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes." Walt Whitman
"...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
"Form is never more than an extension of content. Robert Creeley to Charles Olson
"Form follows function." Frank Lloyd Wright*
Ordinary Mind includes eternal perceptions. A. G.
"Nothing is better for being Eternal
Nor so white as the white that dies of a day." Louis Zukofsky
Notice what you notice. A. G.
Catch yourself thinking. A. G.
Observe what's vivid. A. G.
Vividness is self-selecting. A. G.
"Spots of Time" William Wordsworth
If we don't show anyone we're free to write anything. A. G.
"My mind is open to itself." Gelek Rinpoche
"Each on his bed spoke to himself alone, making no sound." Charles Reznikoff
II Path (Method, Or Recognition)
"No ideas but in things." "... No ideas but in the Facts." William Carlos Williams
"Close to the nose." W. C. Williams
"Sight is where the eye hits." Louis Zukofsky
"Clamp the mind down on objects." W C. Williams
"Direct treatment of the thing ... (or object)." Ezra Pound, 1912
"Presentation, not reference." Ezra Pound
"Give me a for instance." Vernacular
"Show not tell." Vernacular
"The natural object is always the adequate symbol." Ezra Pound
"Things are symbols of themselves." Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
"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
"And being old she put a skin / on everything she said." W. B. Yeats
"Don't think of words when you stop but to see the picture better." Jack Kerouac
"Details are the Life of Prose." Jack Kerouac
Intense fragments of spoken idiom best. A. G.
"Economy of Words" Ezra Pound
"Tailoring" Gregory Corso
Maximum information, minimum number of syllables. A. G.
Syntax condensed, sound is solid. A. G.
Savor vowels, appreciate consonants. A. G.
"Compose in the sequence of musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome." Ezra Pound
"... awareness ... of the tone leading of the vowels." Ezra Pound
"... an attempt to approximate classical quantitative meters . . . Ezra Pound
"Lower limit speech, upper limit song" Louis Zukofsky
"Phanopoeia, Melopoeia, Logopoeia." Ezra Pound
"Sight. Sound & Intellect." Louis Zukofsky
"Only emotion objectified endures." Louis Zukofsky
Speech synchronizes mind & body Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
"The Emperor unites Heaven & Earth" Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world" Shelley
"Make it new" Ezra Pound
"When the music changes, the walls of the city shake" Plato
"Every third thought shall be my grave W Shakespeare, The Tempest
"That in black ink my love may still shine bright." W. Shakespeare, Sonnets
"Only emotion endures" Ezra Pound
"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.
"... 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
"To diminish the mass of human and sentient sufferings." Gelek Rinpoche