Allen Ginsberg's Mind Writing Slogans

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

"First Thought is Best in Art, Second in Other Matters." - William Blake

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

III Fruition (Result, Or Appreciation)

• Spiritus = Breathing = Inspiration = Unobstructed Breath
• "Alone with the Alone" - Plotinus
• Sunyata (Sanskrit) = Ku (Japanese) = Emptiness
• "What's the sound of one hand clapping?" - Zen Koan
• "What's the face you had before you were born?" - Zen Koan
• Vipassana (Pali) = Clear Seeing
• "Stop the world" - Carlos Castafleda
• "The purpose of art is to stop time." - Bob Dylan
• "the unspeakable visions of the individual - J. K.
• "I am going to try speaking some reckless words, and I want you to try to listen recklessly." - Chuang Tzu (Tr. Burton Watson)
• "Candor" -Whitman
• "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin." - William Shakespeare
• "Contact" - A Magazine, Nathaniel West & W. C. Williams, Eds.
• "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
• "Subject is known by what she sees." -A. G.
• Others can measure their visions by what we see. - A. G.
• Candor ends paranoia. - A. G.
• "Willingness to be Fool." - Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
• "Day & Night / you're all right." - Gregory Corso
• Tyger: "Humility is Beatness." - Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche & A. G.
• Lion: "Surprise Mind" - Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche &A.G.
• Garuda: "Crazy Wisdom Outrageousness" - Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
• Dragon: "Unborn Inscrutability" - Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
• "To be men not destroyers" - Ezra Pound
• Speech synchronizes mind & body - Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
• "The Emperor unites Heaven & Earth" - Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
• "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world" - Percy Bysshe 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
  Naropa Institute, July 1992
  New York, March 5, 1993
  New York, June 27, 1993

William S. Burroughs Influence on Allen Ginsberg's Writing

Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs were two of the most influential writers of the Beat Generation. Together, they had a profound influence on each other's writing and their friendship and collaboration were an important part of the literary landscape of their time.

After meeting in New York City in 1944, Ginsberg and Burroughs quickly became close friends. They shared a love of pushing the boundries of literature and and breaking mores of traditional writing. They often discussed their work with each other and shared feedback with each other.

They drew insiration from each other's writing, both in terms of style and subject matter. Ginsberg's poetry regularly included long, winding lines and stream-of-consciousness, while Burroughs's novels were known for their nonlinear narratives, hallucinogenic imagery, and use of his "Cut up method". Both writers were influenced by the other's non-traditional approach, cross pollinating each other's styles into their own work.

They also influenced each other's choice and scope of subject matter. In a highly repressive era, Ginsberg's poem "Howl" was a gay work of literature, and Burroughs's novel "Naked Lunch" was a groundbreaking exploration of drug addiction and mental illness. Both writers were influenced by the other's willingness to tackle taboo subjects, and they often pushed each other to be bolder and more daring in their work. Pushing the envelope together allowed them to go further than they might have standing alone. They were two of the cornerstones of one of the great movements in literature.

In addition to their individual writing, Ginsberg and Burroughs also collaborated on several projects, including the book "The Yage Letters," which chronicled their experiences with the hallucinogenic drug yagé in South America. Through their collaborations, they continued to influence each other's writing and explore new literary territory together.

Watch Video: Allen Ginsberg reads "Howl," (Big Table Chicago Reading, 1959)

Read Howl by Allen Ginsberg