How To Read/Sourcebook

Allen Ginsberg 1981 Naropa class continues from here

Student: (Larry) Fagin also last class…
AG:  Yeah.
Student:  … said “Beware” of what he called “the blank of blank.”
AG:  Yeah.
Student:  “The fire of eternity”.
AG:  Yeah.
Student: Blank
AG:  “Of” –  beware of “of.”  Beware of “of.”  He got that from (Ezra) Pound.  Beware of the “dim vales of peace.”  You know Pound’s “A Few Don’ts for Writers.”  Does anybody know that?
Student:  Uh-huh.
Student (Joel Lewis):  Yeah.
AG:  Anybody here?  Anybody not know it?  That’s….
Student:  Go..
AG:  Pardon me?
Student:  Go ahead with it.
AG:  Oh, it’s a great thing.  It’s real short in Pound’s Essays.  I think it’s in an essay “How to Read.” (There’s a thing called “A Few Don’ts for Writers,” it’s in his Collected Literary Essays at the very beginning, “How to Read“ and then the early part, “A Few Don’ts for Writers.”)
Student:  ABC of Reading
AG:  No, this is something different.
Student (Joel Lewis): Selected Essays
AG:  Similar.  Some similar ideas in the The ABC of Reading, but …
Student:  “The Don’ts …”? “The Don’ts….”?

AG:  … “A Few Don’ts for Writers” I don’t think it’s in there (in The ABC of Reading).  Is it?
I don’t think so.  It comes in the Literary Essays at the beginning, and it’s one of the best things to have around.  One of the best essays on writing I’ve ever read.  Because I don’t think there’s many that are interesting.  Not to me.  There may be many great essays on how to write, but this is the sum and pith and gist and it’s all in five or six pages.  And easy reading.  It’s no…  there’s nothing you have to plow through a whole book or anything.  He’s got it down to “A Few Don’ts” – what don’t you do?  What don’t do.  Like don’t get into the “dim vales of peace.”  That’s what reminded me.  “The dim vales of peace.”  [Editorial note – Pound’s specific declaration –  Don’t use such an expression as “dim lands of peace.” It dulls the image. It mixes an abstraction with the concrete. It comes from the writer’s not realizing that the natural object is always the adequate symbol.]
Actually, I don’t know if you can find it in the library.  Last year I compiled for one of these “Lively Journey” classes [Editorial note – Randy Roark writes – “These were classes organized at Naropa which sought to present each core of study at the school in a capsule form”] a little anthology of the best piths and gists or criticism taken out of (William Carlos) Williams, (Ezra) Pound, (John) Keats, and (William) Wordsworth.  I have a copy of it somewhere around.  And it should be in the library – last year’s “Lively Journey” text.

Student:   A sourcebook.

AG:  Sourcebook.  Sourcebook.  If nobody else knows, if George (Banks) [Editorial note – the Naropa librarian at the time] doesn’t have it, then come to me and I’ll see if I can locate it.

But basically what it was was a few pages of that, of the Pound, a couple of statements by Williams from his Selected (Literary) Essays, a couple of things that I thought were useful.  Just three of four paragraphs or sentences.  And maybe one or two lines of Bunting.  Bunting has a couple of interesting statements.  Then Wordsworth talking about the diction – using the diction of everyday speech.  And Keats talking about having “Negative Capability” – being able to have a couple of contradictory ideas in your mind and putting them down without getting freaked out and without blowing apart.  And that seemed to me the whole gist of the art of poetry.  The only thing left out was how to get the steam heat up.  How you get inspired.  But as for what to do with it, that little Pound stuff.

You’d like that.  You should look it up.  It’s easy.  It’s easy reading.

to be continued

Audio for there above can be heard here, beginning at approximately  sixty-two minutes in and concluding at approximately sixty-five minutes in