“The trick is to make the memory, (or) the imagined experience, stronger than anything else in one’s consciousness, to make the “pretend game” the one that counts … Tricks of the mystics and contemplatives should prove handy: simplify one’s life; spend lots of time in solitude; avoid chaotic, undisciplined experiences until one is prepared to encounter them; quell the violent passions (jealousy, envy, malice). I’d add one dictum probably not present in any handbook for contemplatives—cultivate a refined sensuousness.”
—Garrett Hongo, journal entry from The Poet’s Notebook: Excerpts from the Notebooks of 26 American Poets, edited by Stephen Kuusisto, Deborah Tall, and David Weiss (W. W. Norton & Co., 1995)
