[Here is a mash-up of Cosmopolitan Greetings, a poem by Allen Ginsberg, and my own commentary in the form of a poem in kind. Every "first" line is Ginsberg's; the line in italics that follows is mine.]
Cosmopolitan Greetings /Greetings From L.A.
Stand up against governments, against God.
Stand up against studios, against independents.
Stay irresponsible.
Answer to none.
Say only what we know & imagine.
Speak only to how we live.
Absolutes are coercion.
Don't be coerced by certainties.
Change is absolute.
Change is a certainty.
Ordinary mind includes eternal perceptions.
The audience is also made of stardust.
Observe what's vivid.
See images.
Notice what you notice.
Observe what you see.
Catch yourself thinking.
Put it on the page.
Vividness is self-selecting.
Catch yourself going off.
If we don't show anyone, we're free to write anything.
If you write past all opinions, you can really start to write.
Remember the future.
Then go further.
Advise only yourself.
Who will want to see this, long after you're gone?
Don't drink yourself to death.
Don't get gone any faster than you need to.
Two molecules clanking against each other requires an observer to become scientific data.
Two movies opening against each other don't compete unless computed.
The measuring instrument determines the appearance of the phenomenal world after Einstein.
Calibrate your apparatus by percentages, and the word is only worth money.
The universe is subjective.
Not everyone will love you, but someone is ready to hear you.
Walt Whitman celebrated Person.
Howard Hawks celebrated soul.
We Are an observer, measuring instrument, eye, subject, Person.
We can only look to us for inspiration.
Universe is person.
The audience is a person.
Inside skull vast as outside skull.
Inside character's mind more explosive than head blown-off.
Mind is outer space.
Your mind is big as the biggest screen.
"Each on his bed spoke to himself alone, making no sound."
"Everyone in his own movie, humming his own soundtrack."
First thought, best thought.
First draft, best draft: it's something to change.
Mind is shapely, Art is shapely.
If the vision is true, the true story will follow.
Maximum information, minimum number of syllables.
Cut.
Syntax condensed, sound is solid.
Narrative tight, sound alive.
Intense fragments of spoken idiom, best.
Only what need to be spoken.
Consonants around vowels make sense.
Meanings within images make sense.
Savor vowels, appreciate consonants.
Savor images, appreciate meanings.
Subject is known by what she sees.
Her rigorously examined truth is valid.
Others can measure their vision by what we see.
Others can see their lives in what you see.
Candor ends paranoia.
[The preceding post was inspired by the book Conversation Pieces: Poems That Talk to Other Poems (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets series, with a preface by Billy Collins).]
Reading this post could make a man fail a drug test.
Lucid stuff... I suddenly feel like a threat to myself, perhaps society at large. Time to go upstairs and come down with a good rom/com, "13 Going on 30."
Poetry: drugs for the mind.
- E.C. Henry from Bonney Lake, WA
Posted by: E.C. Henry | May 13, 2007 at 09:12 PM
"Mind is shapely, Art is shapely." was one of Ginsberg's favorite lines. He was fond of saying it (at least in the brief time I knew and studied with him)... liked using it as a pick-up line to convince pretty young men that he was as "shapely" as them - in mind and art, if not body.
He is missed.
Posted by: Laura Deerfield | May 13, 2007 at 09:24 PM
Billy,
Wonderful responses, in the true spirit of Ginsberg.
Have you ever tried to levitate a studio? If anyone can do it, you can!
Reminds me of Kerouac’s “List of Essentials” for writers:
http://www.poetspath.com/transmissions/messages/kerouac.html
My favorites re screenwriting:
- Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
- Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
- Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
- Youre a Genius all the time
- Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven
Posted by: dottie | May 14, 2007 at 01:10 AM
nice stuff
mimimim information, minimum number of syllables.
uh
Posted by: uhjim | May 17, 2007 at 02:09 AM
EC: I love your definition of poetry.
Laura: Fascinating stuff. Want to tell us more about your time studying with Ginsberg?
Dottie: Thanks for the Kerouac! Neat and sweet.
Hey Uh: Mini-mimi-minimum-umum.
Posted by: mernitman | May 17, 2007 at 02:40 PM
Well, I took the MFA course in Writing and Poetics at Naropa University. The writing school there was founded by Anne Waldman and Allen Ginsberg - and named (somewhat absurdly) the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics - the latter half of the name being a reference to Gertrude Stein. I say absurdly, because I always considered Kerouac's work to be very much embodied, very much physical... but that little contradictory bit of excessive name dropping was very much in the spirit of the beat poets.
It's a small school, and the writing department, graduate and undergraduate, was perhaps 60 students, so there was a wonderful intimacy with the instructors. Ginsberg was there in the summer, and others like Hakim Bey, Adrienne Rich, Jerome Rothenberg and Diane diPrima taught courses. Anselm Hollo was on the regular staff. Other people came and spoke, performed or visited - including Philip Glass, Gregory Corso, Ed Sanders, and Ram Daas... I did a fundraiser with Ferlinghetti for a minority students' fund and got chewed out by Amiri Baraka for the same.
Really, it was an incomparable experience. I have several stories.
What I learned (and can apply to screenwriting,) and this may seem as contradictory as the school's name, was the value of structure. I wrote more formal poems while I was there than I ever have. I found that using the structure of a defined form was freeing to the imagination, it gave inspiration a lightning post to be drawn to. It allowed you to direct and craft the raw idea.
I was particularly fond of repetitive forms like the pantoum, which taught me how an image can be repeated to tie a poem together - and can change meaning slightly every time it recurs.
It also inspired me to go out and get life experience, to travel and have adventures - rather than become an academic. Nothing against academia. If I had gone that route I'd probably have a small measure more recognition as a poet, and a literary critic or theorist... but I think I've lived a far more interesting life.
For some of my poetry (I no longer write in form much, but it still influences my work):
http://www.myspace.com/empresscat
Posted by: Laura Deerfield | May 17, 2007 at 06:45 PM