Allen Ginsberg. June 16, 1976 Naropa lecture (on his early poetry) continues from here
AG: What I started was to cover phases of development of my poetry, so this is (at) twenty-four years. Now, (1976) I’m 50 (sic). The next stage was a funny compromise, thinking that, okay, I can’t make it by juggling symbolic language, referring to roses, light, spiritual wars, ineffable visions, so the only thing I can do is attempt to describe what I actually saw, to pay attention to detail, to pay attention to minute particulars, or to sort of have my cake and eat it, in a way. Look out at the world as if I was having a vision and see the details I might observe if I was having a vision. Maybe not look for the entire vision but at least check out little details, like the particular pale greenieness of the buds on the south end of the tips of branches of the trees in the backyard where they’re pointing at the sun. The new bud pale greenery, the pale green budding of the new bud as distinct from the older, thick green, dark green of the regular leaves. So, noticing detail.
Around that time, (19)48 on, I ran into William Carlos Williams, and so naturally the same thought came to me was that Williams was actually living in eternity, observing the detail of eternity, refusing to point to it as eternity, refusing to talk about it in poetic terms, refusing to talk about it symbolically, cutting off all extra self-conscious feedback thought but just directly perceiving what was in front of him, and I realized that was what (William) Blake also said to do. Blake said poetry is in “Minute Particulars” and Williams said, “No ideas (about eternity, no ideas) but in things” themselves. No ideas but in the facts. “No ideas but in things“. So I began accidentally picking up on Williams’ work, (because he lived near me), and writing poems that were in imitation of his style, which were little short notations of detail. There was a book called Empty Mirror which I wrote around the same time as this Gates of Wrath . What I did was I sent a bunch of these poems to Williams and he wrote back that they weren’t very good. What he said was “In this mode perfection is basic.” And these are imperfect, I understood, in a sense that there was very little actual concrete detail in them. It was all sort of rejuggling of the imagery or roses and light and mystical references, sort of rehashing it over and over again. I thought maybe I could concentrate all my mind’s focus into these few symbols and juggle them around, make some crystal perfect symbolic statement that would turn other people on and catalyze the same vision in other people. But it didn’t work, or it didn’t seem to work. So what I did was to turn to prose, so to speak, turn to little prosaic observations.
In Buddhist terms this would be Vipassina, I guess. That is, paying attention to ordinary mind detail and a sharpening of focus and finer clearer Zen-ish perception of a black scrape on the floor where a chair has been pulled. In other words, one detail indicating a whole previous activity. But, anyway, seeing what’s in front of the eyes, or seeing where the eye strikes, or “Sight is where the eye hits.” That’s a line of Louis Zukofsky. “Sight is where the eye hits.“
to be continued