Poetrymind: 2012

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Some Changes

I retired from my job as co-director of the New Engand College MFA program in Poetry on June 29, 2012.

I am currently developing a handmade papermaking cooperative at Tsegyalgar East in Conway.MA.

Please visit our blog ~~Khandroling Papermaking Cooperative~~

Thursday, February 09, 2012

My Annual Losar Poem: Year of the Water Dragon

Year of the Water Dragon

Hail imperial beast
Patient denizen of the underworld
Abiding in the watery abyss
According to tidal lunations
The ebb and flow of necessity
Biding your time beneath the surface
A Loch Ness of ephemeral appearance
Neither here nor there
Until rising at will into the mists of time
To present yourself
At this critical juncture
The Black Era
Honored guest
Master* of wisdom
Manifest perfection

Jacqueline Gens
Conway, MA
Tsegyalgar East
Losar 2012

*The Water Dragon Year is Male. Had it been designated Female, I would have written "Mistress."

WHAT IS POETRYMIND?

Officially Poetrymind’s a Decade Old

In the Spring of 2005 while co-directing the New England College MFA Program in Poetry, I considered starting my own blog. I had been introduced to blogging through an MAT program in Information Technology I was enrolled in at Marlboro College.

I still remember sitting bolt upright one night when the word poetrymind manifested as the title. I believe I first heard this word from Russell Edson--at NEC when he read. At one point he responded to a challenge from a faculty saying something like there is only one thing that matters and that is poetrymind. Edson was a magical and deeply ironic prose poet whose work I admire. His work epitomizes for me the simple notion that things are not what they seem. Thus, the phenomenal world is infused with magic and the mystery of discovery with ever fresh eyes.

For me poetrymind is synonymous with “First Thought, Best Thought,” which is to say, thought that represents a state of mind free from conceptual overlays of judgment and second guessing. Rather it is elegant thought borne from pure perception, the original thought before attaching judgement. The slogan, "First Thought, Best Thought", coined by the late Chogyam Trungpa and Allen Ginsberg at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is not about writing without revision, as some believe. It is about experience first hand--direct and pure without a lot of egotistic filters or projections.

I am reminded of what the great Zen master, Susuki Roshi called “Beginner’s Mind” --- every moment offers a “fresh” experience. The ground is open vast mind or as Pema Chodron aptly puts it—The sky is open mind and everything else is the weather. Words are the display of poetrymind –alive with potentiality. Words in this context can become a vehicle for discovery of who we are.

See No Blood for Hubris on Russell Edson