Ginsberg Variations

“Catch yourself thinking.”
—Allen Ginsberg, “Cosmopolitan Greetings”

Catch myself gossiping.
Catch myself kvetching.
Catch myself zoning out.

Catch myself sneering.
Catch myself smirking.
Catch myself looking away.

Catch myself signaling.
Catch myself signing off superciliously.
Catch myself about to tell a quarter-truth.

Ho-hum

William Carlos Williams/Selected Poems
New Directions, 1968

See Also
Reznikoff, Complete Poems; 

Thursday 26 May 2011
Someone please tell me the big deal about WCW, I’m halfway through this book and am not astounded, inspired, driven to write in response to his written responses.   He doesn’t affect me the way Cardenal has, or Reznikoff, and Sanders…

Go home from Blue-Eye, if the tornadoes don’t kill me, and look up the section (encomium) on WCW in Allen’s Deliberate Prose.

Follow-up
Norton Anthology of Poetry: read WCW section
Williams, Illuminations
Williams, Paterson

Poems to record and reread from this library copy (trying to save money)
Danse Russe, 5
Dedication for a Plot of Ground, 6-7
Smell, 11
Tract, 12-14
Pastoral, 15
The Widow’s Lament in Springtime, 17-18
The Lonely Street, 20
The Red Wheelbarrow, 30
To Mark Anthony in Heaven, 51

Meditations

 

 

Written in the Margins of Ginsberg’s “Why I Meditate”

There are 10,000 reasons
to meditate (at least)

There are 10,000 beings
to save (for starters)

There are 10,000 demented states of consciousness
to purify (carpe diem)

There are 10,000 dreams
to snap out of (thank Buddha)

There are 10,000 ways
to befriend ourselves (go slowly)

There are 10,000 opportunities in 24 hours
to wake up (let’s do it)

Writing to Wake Up 2020: A Winter Course in Creativity and Community

Writing is essential to my life, like breathing. I can live without a husband but I cannot live without writing. By writing I become one with the world and with myself.
—Nawal El Saadawi

What I discovered that autumn at Stinson Beach was that each morning, after the routines of dressing and feeding the kids, and eating breakfast, I would simply and without forethought find myself at the window looking out at that small garden and writing [my play]. So that it simplemindedly dawned on me over time that maybe that was all there was to it: maybe, just maybe, a writer was nothing more than someone who wrote. Gratuitously, and sometimes aimlessly, sat down and wrote—often without design.
—Diane di Prima

So I try to write during those ‘naked moments’ of epiphany the illumination that comes every day a little bit. Some moment every day, in the bathroom, in bed, in the middle of sex, in the middle of walking down the street, in my head, or not at all. So if it doesn’t come at all, that’s the illumination . . . . So I try to pay attention all the time. The writing itself, the sacred act of writing, when you do anything of this nature, is like prayer. The act of writing being done sacramentally, if pursued over a few minutes, becomes like a meditation experience, which brings on a recall of detailed consciousness that is an approximation of high consciousness. High epiphanous mind.
—Allen Ginsberg

I just want to continue to do what I’ve always done, which is to write, to think about these things. I’m searching for an understanding. Not for my readers, for myself. It’s a process of exploration. It has to further my understanding of the ways things work. So in a way it’s a selfish journey, too. It’s a way of pushing myself further and deeper into looking at the society in which I live.
—Arundhati Roy

Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.
— Jack Kerouac

Even with all our sophisticated technologies and modes of communication, who feels as though there is enough time? And yet, especially this year, we need time, as community activist Grace Lee Boggs has said, to “grow our souls”: Time to think, to explore, to share, to listen; time to be, and, as Thich Nhat Hanh would say, to inter-be with ourselves, each other, and the world.

Dharma Sister

Revision

The poet W. H. Auden wrote
“The funniest and kindest of mortals
Are those who are most aware of the baffle of being”
(A friend named Rex used this quotation
In an inscription to me of Thomas Merton’s
New Seeds of Contemplation
circa 1982)

I’d adapt the poet this way:
“The funnest, friendliest, and kindest of mortals
Are those who are most aware
Of the beauty of Inter-being
Because they are this mystery
Because they savor the gift of this mystery
Because they awaken this mystery in others”

I.Am.Talking.About.You.Here.

Love,

Mark

 

Please Bodhisattva

For All Allen Ginsbergs Everywhere

Oh Bodhisattva
I’m a slacker

Ach Bodhisattva
My mind sometimes is so many-pointed

Dear Bodhisattva
I’ve grown weary of always having an angle

Woe is me Bodhisattva
My middle name is “Scattered”

L. K.Lapinski

She’s Had a Pretty Good Nocturnal Run

At Dunkin’ Donuts
She said matter-of-factly

“I haven’t had a nightmare
In 17 years”

She’s 22

 

 

Share the Wealth with Laura Katherine Lapinski: The Films of Wes Anderson

Laura Lapinski, a graduate student in psychology at SIUE, is doing her Share the Wealth on film director Wes Anderson this Saturday. For those interested in joining us, here’s some background from Laura…

Wes Anderson is an American film writer and director. I find him truly unique and remarkable. His individual style is exclusive for a few reasons. One main difference is the cinematography style Anderson uses. To move from scene to scene, he transitions by actually moving the camera directly into the next scene. Its a simple thing yet so original. Wes Anderson movies are aggressively quirky. This is my one of my favorite things about them. The aesthetic involved in each film is similar and unmistakable. The films somehow give off a vintage and modern vibe at the same time.

Blasts from the Past

 

 

Hold It All

It must have been 1983, springtime: I asked former classmate Ray Pruitt what he’d been reading. “Last night, Kierkegaard, Proust, and Phil Berrigan.”

 

Writing Our Own Histories: A Fall Class

This is the second time this year I am facilitating a course on this  do-it-yourself theme, which comes from  Allen Ginsberg, “You have to write your own history, nobody’s going to do it for you.“  

I invite you to become acquainted with authors and works that  I have found engaging, energizing, and intriguing. We will examine the structure and content  of  accessible books by three people who’ve been immersed in the Zen tradition:  Kazuaki Tanahashi and Mayumi Oda, artists who came  to the U.S. from Japan, and Robert Aitken, who lived long stretches of time in Japan.  We will experiment with  creative imitation, for example, writing off of Aitken’s “miniatures,” which could  lead to fresh inspiration for embarking on new work or for reclaiming work we’ve been putting off.   

Writing Our Own Histories: A Spring/Summer Class

“First We Read, Then We Write”
–title of Robert D. Richardson’s study on Emerson’s creative life

“Something that you feel will find its own form”
–Jack Kerouac, U.S. novelist and poet

“You have to write your own history, nobody’s going to do it for you. “
—Allen Ginsberg, bard, activist, professor

This class invites you to experiment with several creative forms that I have found engaging, energizing, and intriguing. The practice of imitation can lead to fresh inspiration for embarking on new work or for reclaiming work we’ve been putting off.

During class sessions we will examine the structure of works by Alice Walker, Svetlana Alexievich, Eduardo Galeano, and Joe Brainard. We will cover each book in two sessions. We will do relevant writing practices in and outside of class, for example, getting in touch with our vast storehouse of memories (Brainard). Also, by the end of each session we will make plans for writing on our own in the week ahead. Possible areas for exploration are personal and collective memoir and autobiography. Participants will be encouraged to connect during the week, and share how the writing and reading processes inter-are. I will be happy to meet up, listen, and share when it is convenient for you.

Milosz’s ABC’s

Milosz’s ABC’s
Translated from the Polish by Madeline G. Levine

Listening  last night to Natalie Long talking about Poland and mentioning Czeslaw Milosz  reminded  me of reading his ABC’s back in 2001.  Around  that time I had been reading the Cuban Reinaldo Arenas and the Uruguayan Eduardo Galeano.  I was searching for a “form” to put together my scattered and varied materials pertaining to life with Mev Puleo.  All three of them provided encouragement to synthesize a form of collage/mosaic for the  telling of that story.

Turning back  now to those ABC’s, here are the alphabetical entries that fill his 313-page book.

Abramowicz

Abrasza

Academy

Adam and Eve

Adamic

Adamites

Admiration

After All

Alchemy

Alchimowicz

alcohol

Alik Protasewicz

Amalrik

Ambition

America—

“What splendor!  What poverty!  What humanity! What inhumanity!  What mutual goodwill!  What individual isolation!  What loyalty to the ideal! What hypocrisy!  What a triumph of conscience!  What perversity!  The America of contradictions can, not must, reveal itself to immigrants who have made it here.  Those who have not made it will see only its brutality.” 25

American Poetry—

“Of American poets, I will always have the greatest affinity with Walt Whitman.”

American Visa

Ancewicz

Angelic Sexuality