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Q: What is the best advice you can give a poet today?
Allen Ginsberg: I would say learn some form of mindfulness meditation. Read widely in modern work. Trust sincerity and remember that the first thought is the best thought. Because the mind is shapely, the art will be shapely if you're spontaneous. And it's okay to revise, if you're going back to your original thoughts.
Basically all I'm doing, maybe for lack of imagination, other technique or talent, is just trying to write my mind. I can't write a big novel like Dostoyevsky or
Kerouac. I'm not really very good at imagining visual surrealist scenes like Burroughs. I'm not like Emile Zola that I can reproduce a whole scroll of reality. I can do little fragmentary glimpses into the peculiarities of my own mind which amuse and amaze me and are a little bit revelatory for others. I'm just trying to be accurate, precise, and clear. I'm working in a tradition that's not original. I may not be very smart, but I'm smart enough to stick to reality and work from nature. It seems to work out for people. So, perhaps I've made a virtue of my defects. I'm just getting these little fragments, moments of recollection of what I was actually thinking.
-- interviewed by Lisa Meyer in Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review
I have nothing to say
and I am saying it
and that is poetry.
-- John Cage
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