Mind Writing Slogans
by Allen Ginsberg

"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
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
* Quoting his mentor; Louis Sullivan.
Allen Ginsberg "Mind Writing Slogans" © 1992, 1993 by Allen Ginsberg, in What Book: Buddha Poems From Beat To Hiphop, Gary Gach, ed., copyright © 1998 by Gary Gach. Parallax Press, Naropa Institute, July 1992, New York, 5 March 1993, New York, 27 June 1993
Source
Allen Ginsberg "Mind Writing Slogans" © 1992, 1993 by Allen Ginsberg, in What Book: Buddha Poems From Beat To Hiphop, Gary Gach, ed., copyright © 1998 by Gary Gach. Parallax Press, Naropa Institute, July 1992, New York, 5 March 1993, New York, 27 June 1993
Source
Allen Ginsberg reads "Howl," (Big Table Chicago Reading, 1959)
In 1959, Gregory Corso and Peter Orlovsky accompanied Ginsberg to Chicago for a benefit reading for "Big Table" [named at Kerouac's suggestion], a newly established literary publication born as a result of censorship of the student magazine the Chicago Review. The reading took place on 29 January, 1959.