Allen Ginsberg’s Epiphany workshop

I once took a workshop from Allen Ginsberg. It was a simple exercise. He told us that if you were to write down ten epiphany experiences you would have a lifetime of writing before you. (Epiphany—a comprehension of the meaning of something by means of a sudden intuitive realization. From the Greek to show forth.)

When I decided to write this exercise for you, I then followed the advise of Ginsberg, and wrote about one of the experiences.

Always Searching for Red Fish Lake

by
Jean Emerson

Last week, I found a set of notes in my computer. I do not remember what I was looking form but all of a sudden there they were: the notes that I copied into my computer when Bill and I returned from Idaho. I could almost hear the birds shrilling in the trees, almost feel the fresh wind coming up from the lake. I wanted to fill out the notes, revisit that time. But, there were obligations to be fulfilled.

Tonight, when I finally set aside a little patch of time with the intention of writing about the joy that I felt when I found that lost file, I couldn’t find the file in my computer. And, again, I had lost my connection to that special time.

By a rare quirk of prudence, in my joy at finding the lost file, I had made a hard copy which had in turn gotten mixed in among the papers littering the table in the other room.

The date on the print out reads, June 4, 1988. So it is almost a decade and a half since we flew to Idaho to visit the Mercers.

Idaho is a land of amazing geology--rushing rivers and granite bluffs, distance and lakes. Together, the four of us, Maxine, Maurn, Bill and I, rented a log lodge from the Government Park Services. The lodge had wide window that opened out on a lake.

For a while we sat on the porch of the lodge, watched the fish jump out in the lake and talked about things people will talk about in the hush of pine forests. And then just as the sun was moving down the sky toward the tops of the trees the talk turned to the Allen Ginsberg workshop I had been to the day before we hopped the plane to Idaho. Maurn had retired from Lockheed with plans to write his novel, Maxine was a poet that I had taken classes with in San Jose, and, of course, it has always been Bill’s interest in writing that has led him to egg me on into the deep waters of poetry.

"What was it like?" They wanted to know.

And so, I told them of my disappointment. Ginsberg, being a Buddhist and having something of an extreme respect for the democratic process, opened the session with a question. "How shall we proceed?" he asked. "I, myself, would prefer to introduce you to some Buddhist writing exercises, but I know that you have handed in some poetry for me to read, and I have been told that some of you would be disappointed if we did not work over, or overwork the poems you have handed in. I think there are too many people in this room to give attention to each of the poems. But, you have paid your entry fee, so I am willing to do whatever the majority want. The only right thing to do is to put it to a vote.

"Let’s see a show of hands. How many of you would like to do the writing exercises?"

To my disappointment, mine was the only hand raised.

"Now, how many want to go over the poems?" He asked. All the other hands flew up. So we talked about poems.

There were people who complained about the workshop. I did not. Only about not getting to do the Buddhist exercises. I thought he said a lot of interesting things. I suppose that if you had been the person who began to read in that sort of chant-like style that was popular in Santa Cruz at the time, you would not have wanted to hear, "Start over please. I want you to think about the people in the room. If you are going to read them a poem, you owe it to them to read it in such a way that they can understand you. Do not lose the meaning in that singsong rhythm. And, speak loud enough so that person in the far corner can hear."

I think that there were people there who expected him to tap them on the shoulder with a sword of some sort, and pronounce, "I dub thee POET." For the most part when he talked about the poems, he did not talk about technique, he talked about the ideas that they suggested to him. I was perfectly entranced when he leapt from my mother’s little leather library books that I mentioned in my poem to the Midwest town where William S. Burroughs lived for some time, and spent quite some time talking about the socialist commune that produced that series of classics. They believed that if they could produce the great literature cheaply enough, the masses would then be able to read them and by so doing learn enough about ideas that they would not to be duped by political gobbeldy gook.

When I told them that at the end of the session, Ginsberg did relent and send us home with one of his Buddhist writing exercises to do, nothing would do but we all do the exercises together.

We took tablets and pens and went down and sat together on the edge of the dock. I explained to them that he had said that it was a very useful thing to sit down somewhere quiet and very quickly write down ten epiphany experiences. (Epiphany—a comprehension of the meaning of something by means of a sudden intuitive realization. From the Greek to show forth.) Once you have written down these ten epiphanies, you would have the raw material for a lifetime of writing.

You lose a lot of things along the way, some of them important. Some of them people. We keep our lives too hectic. Try to juggle too many balls at one time. But, isn’t it amazing that some times we are given a chance to revisit things that have brought us joy. I hope that Maurn and Maxine are aware that I am thinking of them. I had at the time hopes of working with these exercises quite a great deal. Which I didn’t. As you will have noticed that particular set of notes has a way of eluding me.

As you will notice, I only wrote five. But, you will have to understand that there were friends there, birds calling in the twilight, and the sky fading from blue to purple to indigo. And then there was the fact that I was already well into middle age and so might not need as much writing material as someone younger.

Here are the notes I was so happy to find:

June 4, 1988

Well this is certainly a nice place with all the beams and smell of new cut pine. All the trees tall and thin bending in the wind. Now let me think about the assignment from Allen Ginsberg.

Write ten epiphany experiences.

1. When I was in the second grade Nelda Penn sent me home to get some screen wire for a spatter painting project. The spring mist was light on the wide spreading elm’s branches with this early spring leaves no larger than squirrel’s ears. There was no sound.

2. One day I was driving on Folly Quarter Road. The autumn leaves were bright on the ground and sweeping out of my car’s path. And a pheasant, iridescent in the late sunlight, rose from the street and rode the air stream over the roof of my car.

3. One day when Jack was just home from the hospital with his skin graft I walked over to Mr. Guillete’s store through the Lindscomb’s pasture. The pear trees were in bloom. Mr. Guillette had those oranges from the Rio Grande Valle that were bigger than grapefruit and cost a quarter.

4. One day in Port Arthur Mama and I cleaned the house together and she sent me across the road where the yellow lupines grew, to gather a bouquet and we went to town together.

5. A non-epiphany. I came home from school to find my grandmother Alexander alone reading the Good Housekeeping Magazine. She showed me a Chin Yu ad and told me that if she were my age she would wear nail polish like that. She also told me that when she was a girl and they did the foot washing at the Primitive Baptist Church and the old boys would take turns standing on one another’s shoulders hoping to see some ankle and then when it was her turn to have her feet washed she always made sure there was just a little ankle showing. Then I saw her as the epitome of evil. (assuming she was doing wrong because it was with intent that she was breaking the taboo.)

6. Writing at Red Fish Lake.