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Marc Olmsted


Poetry & Meditation

Writing Kerouac/Sitting Buddha: Spontaneous Poetics & Big Mind
DON'T HESITATE: Mind Breaths on the Poetry Path
Word Flashes & Eye Snapshots: Sketching Your Life Awake

About Marc Olmsted
Student Comments
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Writing Kerouac/Sitting Buddha: Spontaneous Poetics & Big Mind (10 weeks)


This course offers an investigation into the spontaneous and mindful poetics exemplified by Jack Kerouac and the Beats. Inspired by Kerouac's deep connection with the Buddha's view of life, Kerouac/Buddha uses meditation and writing exercises to explore awareness itself. In addition to specific writing techniques to encourage spontaneity and focus, the course will correspond them to the Tibetan Buddhist teachings of View, Meditation and Action. We will put our meditation practice onto the page, respecting the freshness of a first draft as well as reconsidering "mistakes" as not accidental. The point of the course is not to imitate Kerouac but to free one's own voice. Beginning and experienced writers of any genre are welcome and no meditation experience is needed. In fact, advanced writers will be invited to momentarily lay down what they've accomplished, start over at the ground zero of Beginner's Mind and see what happens. The results may freshen their writing in some very unexpected and pleasing ways.

Topics include: SECTION I: Ground, View & Inspiration
The foundation, outlook and quality of inspiration will be discussed within Beat and Buddhist contexts.

Introduction & Lecture 1: Genius All the Time
Kerouac said "You're a Genius all the time." True or not, what might such an outrageous sacred view do for writer's block and insecurity? Excerpts by Kerouac and Tibetan poet-masters Milarepa and Longchenpa with discussion.
Assignment: Have you ever tried to draw without looking at the page? Try writing in the same manner. As Dylan said, "Don't look back."

Lecture 2: First Thought Best Thought
Ginsberg's teacher Trungpa Rinpoche suggested this phrase as a writing approach. Mindfulness separates mediocrity from art. The Divine Madman and the Void as Great Mother. Excerpts by H.H. Dudjom Lingpa, Robert Bly, Anne Waldman, Lenore Kandel, Aleister Crowley, Ramakrishna and Chogyam Trungpa with discussion.
Assignment: Describe a vivid experience or dream in straightforward language anyone can understand. All references, whether personal or even TV shows, need to be described to a stranger as if they were reading it 100 years in the future.

Lecture 3: Lineage
Lineage -- "Standing on the shoulders of giants" as Newton said -- keeps us from having to reinvent the wheel. Of course the Beats and Buddhism have their origins, but some may surprise you. Excerpts from Kerouac, Burroughs, Zen master Ikkyu, and Tibetan saints Rigdzin Godemchen, H.H. Dudjom Rinpoche, Shabkar, and the 3rd Karmapa with discussion.

Assignment: You probably cleaned up your assignment in Lecture 3. If so, compare the original with the cleaned-up version. Did you change things? Are you sure these were good choices now? Try just sitting without doing anything for five minutes. Write down what happened (or didn't happen): boredom, sensations, noises, fantasies etc.

SECTION II: Meditation, Path & Process
Meditation and the focus of writing are brought together.

Lecture 4: Meditation
"Mindful breathing" meditation instruction by Tharpa Choga. Excerpts from William Carlos Williams and Tibetan master Shabkar with discussion. Further suggested reading: Thich Nhat Hanh, Suzki Roshi, and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Assignment: After five minute meditation of counting your outbreaths, "Take a friendly attitude toward your thoughts" as Gelek Rinpoche says. Try to recollect your thoughts and sensations as they occurred chronologically and without judgment. Write them down. Don't bother to organize them. Did this differ from just sitting there in Lecture 3's assignment? Did the mental "support" of counting your breaths help your focus? Did this carry over into your poetry practice?

Lecture 5: Breath
How the oral tradition of poetry continues on the written page. Excerpts from Ginsberg, Whitman, Melville, Thomas Wolfe, Neal Cassady and Shelly with discussion.
Assignment: Take a piece of literature you admire and try reading it out loud. Read your own poetry out loud. Did your sense of the material change? Sit for five minutes. Afterward, sit comfortably, eyes open and intone the sound AHHHHH as a single note. After you get a little tired of "chanting," sit quietly for a short time, then write about what you experienced and what you are experiencing now.

Lecture 6: Eye & the Haiku
Kerouac said, "Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better." Snapshot poetics. Excerpts from Williams, Whalen, Basho, Richard Wright, Kerouac, Pound, di Prima, Ginsberg, the 6th Dalai Lama and Ikkyu with discussion.
Assignment: Here's a Ginsberg exercise: "Stop in tracks once a day, take account of sky, ground & self, write three verses haiku."

Lecture 7: Sketching
"Sketching" is Kerouac's term for recording the images seen and the associations and memories they invoke by a snapshot-like technique of minute particulars, attention to details and the words that convey them precisely rather than "editorial" language (generalities of object and emotion). Excerpts from Pound, Snyder, Kerouac and Burroughs with discussion.
Assignment: Try using "sketching" in capturing day-to-day life and/or nightworld dreams. Really think of it like literally sketching - you are trying to work primarily with images, sounds, smells, and sensations of skin and taste. Avoid "editorial language" or judgment of any kind. No need to comment or be clever or literary.

SECTION III: Action, Fruit & Manuscript

Compassionate activity as candor "ends paranoia" as Ginsberg said. We fulfill our efforts to communicate by sending out our manuscripts.

Lecture 8: Revision
What is the place of revision in a poetics that celebrates "first thought" and spontaneity? How did a master like Ginsberg go about it? Samples of my own work before and after Ginsberg's critique. Discussion.
Assignment: Editing your poems based on samples and suggestions.

Lecture 9: On the Page
From the notebook to the page. What arrangements of line might be considered or determined by original notation? Samples of my own work and others with discussion.
Assignment: Make decisions about arrangement on the page according to what has been discussed: length of "breath", mental pause or division of mental ideas, and in particular, conditions of original notation, i.e. what it looked like when you first wrote it.

Lecture 10: Where to Submit
Time to get your work out there. Samples of what the manuscript should look like and where to send it. Capsule descriptions of some cool and friendly journals you may never have heard of. Rejection slips and how to handle them -- a general discussion and final rally.
Assignment: Send out at least three poems to every address on the list provided.

DON'T HESITATE: Mind Breaths on the Poetry Path (10 weeks)


This course focuses on the work of Allen Ginsberg as example, emphasizing the "mind-writing slogans" he used: "No ideas but in things" (from W.C. Williams) and "First thought, best thought" (from Trungpa Rinpoche). Ginsberg's poetry is divided into specific categories. The biography Dharma Lion and Collected Poems of Allen Ginsberg are suggested but not required, as his poetry excerpts will support lectures. (Reasonably priced used copies are easy to find on-line, however.) As with Kerouac/Buddha, the point is to not to produce an army of Ginsberg clones, but continue to develop Neo-Beat forms and conclusions through one's own voice - mindfulness, spontaneity, meditation in action, clear spacious awareness, crazy wisdom, compassion, candor and sacred view.

Lecture 1: Snapshots
Shamatha (the "calm abiding" meditation of breath awareness) & Kerouac/Buddha poetics refresher. Ginsberg's Selected American Sentences & Haiku.
Assignment: take some eyeball snapshots, either in haiku or word "sketch" of inner and outer "scenery."

Lecture 2: Politics
The practice of Tong-Len (breathing in other's suffering, exhaling compassion), the Bodhisattva Vow. Shelley's "Mask of Anarchy" and Williams' "Impromptu, the Suckers" reprinted in Loka II with Ginsberg's commentary. Wichita Vortex Sutra, Plutonian Ode.
Assignment: Write a political poem without preaching to the choir, grounded in your experience and observation. No editorial (non-image) language.

Lecture 3: Love
The manifestation of wisdom Bodhisattva Chenrezig. His visualization and mantra. The Green Automobile, Contest of Bards.
Assignment: Write a love poem, whether past, present or anticipated future. Same instructions as above, grounded in simple physical experience of body and phenomena. No flowery Hallmark card language.

Lecture 4: Sex
The Great Passion: Discussion of Buddhist Tantra. The Blues. Howl, Please Master.
Assignment: Rhymed Blues. Take one sentence more or less 10 syllables, rhyme the end word two times more, compose two or three stanzas (see examples in lecture). EXTRA CREDIT: Write a sex poem no one has to see, either experience or fantasy. No editorial language. Submit this only if you want.

Lecture 5: Candor
The merit of confession. Howl, Ego Confession.
Assignment: 3-Line Poem - 1) What's your neurotic confusion? 2) What do you really want, desire? 3) What do you notice right where you are now? EXTRA CREDIT: Write your worst secret that no one has to see. Make friends with it, forgive yourself and hope to do better if necessary. Submit this only if you want.

Lecture 6: Ecology
Interdependence. All sentient beings have been your kitten. Wales Visitation.
Assignment: Write the most panoramic inclusive poem you can; include as many details of your immediate experience. What is living in front of your eyes? In your body? What's there you can't see?

Lecture 7: Spiritus
Sacred view. Ginsberg's early Blake vision. Creator God vs. Clear Empty Space. The Lion For Real, Why I Meditate.
Assignment: Consider your most sacred moment. Write a poem about it without any traditional spiritual language. No words like "ineffable."

Lecture 8: Death
What happens? Tibetan Book of the Dead. Kaddish, On Neal's Ashes, Death and Fame, On Cremation of Chogyam Trungpa, Vidyadhara, "What would you do if you lost it?"
Assignment: Write a poem like you're on your deathbed. Who and what do you want to tell?

Lecture 9: The Future & Neo-Beat
Neo-Beat poets and writing for the future. Antler, Andy Clausen, David Cope, Kathleen Wood, Bana Witt, Jim Cohn, Peter Marti, S.A. Griffin, Eliot Katz and others.
Assignment: Look at your collected work this class. Will it be understood in 100 years? 500 years? What may you need to add to make this possible?

Lecture 10: Sending It Out
The manuscript, the chapbook, the webzine.
Assignment: Send it out to the various places listed, including one "impossibility" of your choice. (American Poetry Review, etc.)

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Word Flashes & Eye Snapshots: Sketching Your Life Awake(10 weeks)


"Sketching" is Jack Kerouac's term for recording images seen and the associations and memories they invoke with a snapshot-like technique of minute particulars and attention to the words that convey them precisely rather than with "editorial" language (generalities of object and emotion).

Sketching can be done in fiction, journal or poetry. Its form is primarily prose, but is easily adapted to poetry by breaking the line if one chooses. Sketching has a strong, vital application in modern "flash" (brief) fiction and non-fiction. The class aims more toward process than form. So you can use verse, prose poems, flash - maybe also journal entries, letters, scribbles on napkins, letters? Welcome - poets, fiction writers and journal keepers - Word people all!

What winds up happening in paying attention to the "haiku moments" of our existence is a rediscovery of our world with a sense of wonder. By this appreciation without grasping, we come awake in the sacred, present already in the details and images of our lives but generally lost through inattention. We develop a stronger presence and grow new eyes and ears. And, like all great poets and writers, we root of our words in our bodies and senses as well as our spirits.

Lecture 1: Snapshots

Some selections of Ginsberg's American Sentences and haiku.
Assignment: take some eyeball snapshots, either in haiku or word "sketch" of inner and outer "scenery."

Lecture 2: Eye & the Haiku

Kerouac said, "Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better." Snapshot poetics. Excerpts from Williams, Whalen, Basho, Richard Wright, Kerouac, Pound, di Prima, Ginsberg, the 6th Dalai Lama and Ikkyu, with discussion.
Assignment: Here's a Ginsberg exercise: "Stop in tracks once a day, take account of sky, ground & self, write three verses haiku."

Lecture 3: Transforming into Sketching

Excerpts from Pound, Snyder, Kerouac and Burroughs with discussion.
Assignment: Try using "sketching" in capturing day-to-day life and/or nightworld dreams. Really think of it like literally sketching - you are trying to work primarily with images, sounds, smells, and sensations of skin and taste. Avoid "editorial language" or judgment of any kind. No need to comment or be clever or literary.

Lecture 4: Books of Sketches, Haiku Bones, Books of Dreams

Kerouac's Book of Sketches and Book of Haikus were both published after his death, although many of his scattered haiku appeared in other publications. Sketches is exactly that, "Written On the Little Pages in the Notebooks I Carried in My Breast Pocket 1952 Summer to 1954 December." The haiku speak for themselves.
Assignment: Given these new influences, continue sketching in whatever direction best suits you.

Lecture 5: Visions of Cody

Kerouac's posthumously published novel is considered by many to be his best. It certainly contains some of his finest and most outrageous sketching - passages of minutely detailed observations of car fender reflections in Times Square, reveries of the Three Stooges, and watching Joan Crawford film an outdoor scene in the fog.
Assignment: Hopefully inspired with these yet-wider (and wilder) examples, again continue sketching in whatever direction best suits you.

Lecture 6: Re-vision

What is the place of revision in a poetics that celebrates "first thought" and spontaneity? How did a master like Ginsberg go about it? Samples of my own work before and after Ginsberg's critique. Discussion.

Assignment: Editing your poems based on samples and suggestions.

Lecture 7: Flashes of Ecology

Interdependence. All sentient beings have been your kitten. Ginsberg's Wales Visitation.
Assignment: Write the most panoramic inclusive poem you can; include as many details of your immediate experience. What is living in front of your eyes? In your body? What's there you can't see?

Lecture 8: Flashing on Death

What happens? One of the greatest itches and subjects of literature. Ginsberg's Kaddish, On Neal's Ashes, Death and Fame, On Cremation of Chogyam Trungpa, Vidyadhara, "What would you do if you lost it?"
Assignment: Write a poem like you're on your deathbed. Who and what do you want to tell?

Lecture 9: The Future & Neo-Beat

Neo-Beat poets and writing for the future. Antler, Andy Clausen, David Cope, Kathleen Wood, Bana Witt, Jim Cohn, Peter Marti, S.A. Griffin, Eliot Katz and others.
Assignment: Look at your collected work this class. Will it be understood in 100 years? 500 years? What may you need to add to make this possible?

Lecture 10: Sending It Out
The manuscript, the chapbook, the webzine.
Assignment: Send it out to the various places listed, including one "impossibility" of your choice. (American Poetry Review, etc.)

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About Marc Olmsted


Marc Olmsted is the author of three collections of poetry, including What Use Am I a Hungry Ghost? Alan Ginsberg called Olmsted "...one of the few practitioners post-Kerouac that had picked up on the loose and lucid form that Kerouac had developed." For more on the writer and his work, visit
his Web site.

Comments from Students



Marc is an amazing teacher. I loved the way he would edit our work to just those few necessary words. He encouraged everyone to keep writing even when we didn't have time or thought we didn't have much to say... I'm actually going to re-take this class because there was so much there and I want to keep the momentum going. It's not just about the writing either. I'm feeling a little shy about this but the class actually changed me...opened up something in me that wasn't open before... Getting stuff published on the poetry superhighway was a neat thing...

Cyndry Krey

Marc takes an objectivist approach to his lectures which are delicately draped in poetic lineage, finally picked quotes and excerpts, and wild the out-of-the-box assignments. After finishing both Writing Kerouac/Sitting Buddha and Mind Breaths, I can candidly say that the experience has transformed my love and play for poetry but also has reprogrammed (in a good way) the way I look at literature and life. My mind was stretched in different ways by Marc's clear comments [and] also through lively in-class discussions. It is the perfect class for any poet or student looking to refine their knowledge... I could not be more pleased. It was just an added bonus to have a few poems published at the end of the course.

Chaz Southard

I just wanted to write an email to express my appreciation to writers.com. I just completed Marc Olmsted's "Write like Kerouac, Sit like Buddha"- it was an inspiring and productive 10 weeks. Olmsted served as a well of information and insight, sharing his personal experiences as a friend and student of Ginsberg, a student of buddhism and a practtitioner of spontaneous poetics! The weekly lectures and lessons were lucid, instructive and often, fun! His feedback on work submitted by the class always focused on finding the poem- sometimes through major editing suggestions- he seemed to nail it every time! Thanks!

Genevieve Legacy

I think most of us were pretty clear on this with Marc - Stunningly good. In partcular, the lectures gave me content I could never have gotten elsewhere. I told everybody here about it. The assignments ... allowed us to have wide ranging discussions and get great feedback from Marc. ... Marc is a great poet and a great instructor. I have taken writing courses (though not online) and have gven them up because the one really good teacher I ever found passed away. The rest however never even came close to Marc. Very VERY good. I will definitly sign up for the January course with Marc...I appreciate what you have done here. Quality at a decent price. Thanks

David Tilley

I LOVED this class. I found my voice and the best way to express it. Marc's lectures were inspiring, thought provoking, and sometimes a kick in the rear. His direction and guidance fabulous. I can't wait to take his next class!! I've actually submitted work - and am now awaiting the responses!

Peggy Bell

I took the course with the intention of bettering my understanding of the Beat generation, their aesthetic, the way in which they practiced writing. The class did exactly this. Marc has an intimate understanding of the Beats and practices their principles in his own writing. In addition, his last lecture made the daunting task of sending off material to likely publishers easy--a nice bonus for me!

Lisa McCool-Grime

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