Mesostic poems john cage Each mesostic uses letters from Cage's name as the first or last letter of certain lines to spell out his name. " I had, as a correspondence artist, connected. Apr 24, 2007 · Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 110-year archive of POETRY magazine. " As part of Wake Forest University’s John Cage Fest taking place this Fall, professor and poetry scholar Marjorie Perloff gave a lecture entitled, “John Cage: The Conceptual Poet. This quote from Henry David Thoreau's Essay on Civil Disobedience is one of thirty quotations from which John Cage created Anarchy, a book-length lecture comprising twenty mesostic poems. which mesostic rule? basic : 50% rule : The 50% rule does not permit the second spine letter to appear between spine letters. Sign In Apr 21, 2016 · [5] Exceptions were short mesostic poems Cage wrote in response to requests or as gifts for friends, usually using the name of the recipient as meso-string. His insistent exploration of “nonintention” and his fruitful merging of Western and Eastern traditions have made him a powerful force in the world of the avant-garde. Formatting mesostic poems `a la John Cage David Bellows Abstract LATEX is useful not only for producing beautifully typeset math and science papers but can be just as useful for the typesetting demands of modern po-etry. 100% rule : In his version, the new word runs up the spine of the poem: It’s a letter in the center of each line that spells out a word. (See also below the example. This includes a style of poetry called mesostics that was created by the poet Jackson Mac Low and All Things Cage: John Cage Reads Mesostic Poems on Jasper Johns. May 31, 2024 · John Cage was an interdisciplinarian: composer, poet, philosopher, artist, and, perhaps surprisingly, a mycologist. The Mesostic Form in Letters to Erik Satie Cage's main poetic form from 1969 on?the mesostic?is akin to the acrostic, but developed from his practice of writing occasional diastics on the names of friends. The poems came neatly bound in a little book, and without exception are incredibly beautiful. They also wrote mesostic poems using the 50% rule on the string JOHNCAGE. These writings, though they started out as purely creative, eventually became poems generated by chance operations. ” From a page devoted to mesostics, this is one of Cage’s earliest attempts: This document contains 16 short poems or 'mesostics' dedicated to John Cage. In the style of correspondance (sic) artists, I passed Cage’s mesostic on to Ray Johnson, founder of the New York Correspondance School. Unlike a singer-songwriter who accompanies his own singing by playing a guitar or piano part which supports and plays off of the vocal line, in this work, Cage asks the performer to clap his hands in rhythms which do not only not repeat, but which, at times, create a sense of meter contrary to Jun 25, 2012 · Today I am reading through the inaugural installations of Cage’s unique poetic form, the “mesostic. Jeffrey Lependorf, Director John Cage Trust 1309 Annandale Road Red Hook, NY 12571-3608 +1 (845) 752-2500. ” Perloff’s investigation of the esoteric poetry of the avant-garde in addition to her studies of postmodernism in the visual arts and cultural theory has earned her prominent teaching positions at UCLA and Jul 31, 2009 · I came across mesostic poetry for the first time in my memory (meaning I’m getting old enough to forget more). We are as committed as birds and identically. Readers may be already familiar with the acrostic poem, where the beginning letters of each line in a poem form a message or spell out a name; a mesostic does the same thing but with the spelled-out message May 23, 2024 · In most cases, the vertical key word is meaningful to the rest of the poem rather than an attempt to hide a message within the text. , was an inventor; in the year of his son’s birth he set a world record by staying underwater for twenty-four hours in a submarine of his own design. Apr 7, 2013 · Sean Braune (bio) York Universitysbraune@yorku. by Stefano Pocci. One of the most famous writers of mesostic texts was a composer named John Cage, who posited several rules for this type of poetry, although these are not necessarily absolute. Black-and-white photographs by Robert Mahon. John Cage In by 1987 writing John through Cage published the following a mesostic five-line poem poem called by Samuel "They Come,"1 Beckett: made by writing through the following five-line poem by Samuel Beckett Sep 25, 2013 · A compelling animation of a visual poem, one of John Cages’s mesostics, by Federica Cristiani. In an essay on Jasper Johns written in the 1950s, Cage likens Johns’ preference for the American flag as subject to the preference poets have for the sonnet as a form. Mesosticized. Much of Cage’s writing was composed within a prose poem form he called “mesostic” (similar to acrostic, but led by middle rather than initial letters). Soft cover. " May 7, 1978 · to view them in a literary context, as unique variants of Cage's mesostic poetry. Image 1 Jasper Johns “Dancers on a Plane” 1980–1 Tate T03242 Image 2 Mystical Form of Samvara with Seventy-Four Arms Embracing His Sakti with Twelve Arms, Nepal, seventeenth century Gouache on cloth 711 x 483 mm Location unknown #dharmaart Signed and inscribed by Cage on the inside front cover: "For Kevin on the eve of EWEA etc. Mar 14, 2013 · John Cage The Inventor. Hyperlinked words will take you to a wealth of materials across media -- some drawn from the archives of the John Cage Trust, some discovered within the folds of the World Wide Web, some newly created. His father, John Milton Cage Sr. As a homosexual couple in the postwar period, Cage and Cunningham observed a closeted silence Mar 30, 2021 · The poems were then presented via a reinvention of the ancient mesostich form (pronounced MESS-oh-stick), which Cage called ‘mesostic’. Mesostic form that John Cage used once when writing through Ezra Pound’s Cantos. wrote A poem: “Matsutake I a. He would then include the text immediately following that spine letter until he found the next one, creating a spine that runs down the center of the text. American composer John Cage invented the mesostic some years ago. Bas H ō once. WGXC 90. Notice that this mesostic belongs to Cage's earlier "concrete poetry" phase, the lines built primarily on catalogues of nouns, and the game being that each of two words (or phrases) per stanza can supply the poet with the necessary capital letters (e. Edge “The following ones, each letter of the name being on its own line, were written as poetry. Perhaps his favourite form of artistic writing was the mesostic, a poetic form that he used frequently from the late 60s until his death. of facsimile in Cage's handwriting at the end of the book. hebarits U ku”. " Cage's volume of 'mesostic' poems, intended to be spoken aloud. Jul 16, 2005 · Cage sent a mesostic as reply to my poem "John Cage Shoes. John Cage "The Norton Lectures," Harvard, 1988-89 [MP3] 1. Among many other inventions, including improvements to the internal combustion engine, the Jul 18, 2007 · Joe Williams, who sent me these Cageisms, writes: "My original source for the quotation was the 1990 PBS American Masters program on John Cage which I have on VHS tape. This essay argues that the conceptual writing found in “62 Mesostics re Merce Cunningham” is not devoid of emotion. ! / John. Without doubt the most influential American composer of the last half century, John Cage has had an enormous impact not only on music but on art, literature, the performing arts, and aesthetic thought in general. In addition to their "rock drawings," the students listened to recordings of Cage's music and watched films about his life (sending special thanks to Brian Brandt/Mode Records). [As Cage used it, the word “poetry” seems usually to have denoted verse. The mesostics emerged as another product of Cage's exploration of indeterminacy. Wiki's article explains it ok. Photo of John Cage, reading at Harvard Uni This word play is drawn as a mesostic, a typography practice that is simultaneously inspired by my friend Cidália Silva (who shares the love for words) and John Cage´s conceptual poetry (specially in his Litany for the Whale album). ca Abstract John Cage’s poetry is often analyzed in relation to conceptual writing and constraint, making Cage seem particularly absent. Q & A, Part I 2. The study of mycology considers the invisible ubiquity and ephemerality of spores, their multi-cellular hyphae which branch in indeterminate networks, and are ‘the tissue that holds together much of the world’ (Sheldrake, Entangled Life, 2020). In a mesostic a given letter of the string (in this case, a name) does not occur between itself and its preceding letter. ] A given letter capitalized does not occur between it and the preceding capitalized letter [Cage's first Mesostic Rule, see below]. His mesostic rules involved using chance operations to find "spine" letters within a source text. Johnson replied with an abstract ink drawing called John Cage Feet. In 2010, the John Cage Trust began a three-year annual publication of the John Cage Book of Days, an intimate daily calendar filled with important Cage dates and pithy quotations, and in 2015 we saw the first-ever publication of all eight parts of Cage’s Diary: How to Improve the World (You’ll Only Make Matters Worse) by Siglio Press; in Following our recent online workshops led by Victoria Miguel, a writer and specialist in the work of artist and composer John Cage (1912 – 1992, we have been applying Cage’s process of ‘writing through’ – a method of using mesostic poetry to transform existing texts – to letters exchanged between the celebrated Scottish author and essayist Thomas Carlyle and the American writer Following our recent online workshops led by Victoria Miguel, a writer and specialist in the work of artist and composer John Cage (1912 – 1992, we have been applying Cage’s process of ‘writing through’ – a method of using mesostic poetry to transform existing texts – to letters exchanged between the celebrated Scottish author and essayist Thomas Carlyle and the American writer May 22, 2022 · Harvard University Press, 1990. [Some of these occur] in a book called Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage, Wesleyan University Press, 1973. tr A nslated On January 28, 1992, John Cage delivered a series of lectures at Stanford University in Palo Alto California, just a few months before his death. Its title combines the works “Whistlin’” and “Haikus,” which informs the mesostic form. Volume one’s mesostic poem, “MUSHROOMS et Variationes,” emphasizes the May 13, 2017 · A Chant With Claps is a piece for solo performer in which a vocalist provides his own accompaniment. Since this a very uncommitted and fun practise, I usually create mesostics either to ponder over one specific All Things Cage: John Cage Reads Mesostic Poems on Jasper Johns: Jun 05, 2021 “All Things Cage” continues its break from its usu What follows is John Cage's "Autobiographical Statement"(1990), which, in time, will transform into a fully animated multimedia version. Cage called it the “mesostic”, using the greek word “mesos” for “middle. Sign up. [In the following essay, Perloff examines the form and content of Cage's mesostic endeavors, arguing that in his mesostic poems, Cage adds musical texture and deeper meaning to the texts he uses John Cage’s Mushroom Haiku . The mesostics explore different themes and styles related to Cage's work and philosophy. Oct 23, 2014 · Overpopulation and Art, a mesostic poem by John Cage. It is a formal variant of the acrostic. Some years later Cage turned to the mesostic. Jan 1, 2001 · "That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. These are primarily eye devices. May 21, 2025 · The audio here is “What You Say,” a mesostic poem by John Cage based on text from Jasper Johns. He derived it from the well known acrostic form. Supplement to 452-page hardcover book of the same name. Since then I have written them as poems, the capitals going down the middle, to celebrate whatever, to support whatever, to fulfill requests, to initiate my thinking or my nonthinking (Themes and Variations is the first of a series of mesostic works: to find a way of writing that, though coming from ideas, is not about them but produces them). John Cage reinterprets a Haiku poem and existentially contemplates the middle of the fourth large part of his talk. The letters… May 22, 2006 · But the same article (same paragraph) does suggest that the term "mesostic" may still apply to meso-acrostic poems that do not conform to Cage’s mesostic rules, since it may have been Norman Brown and not Cage who coined the term. A performance will include at least five separate mesostics (but may present all of them, though the complete work should be a full program lasting from Aug 12, 2014 · Throughout his life, Cage created a great deal of written work, both academic essays and more artistic writing. Only the birds aren’t free. . ) In a fifty-percent mesostic, according to Andrew Culver (John Cage's assistant), "Between any two [capitalized] letters, you can't have the second [letter]. The letters appear following the beat of the music. The earliest of these may be his birthday tribute Jun 23, 2020 · It is the book’s singular mix of tactile, aural, and visual elements that induces the sensory acuity Cage relished. org John Cage was born in 1912 in Los Angeles. Though scholars of Cage's writing and music tend to ignore the queer context in which his work was created, this study attempts to reconcile the poet's art with his life. Q & A Jan 28, 1992 · Representing his last major writing, “Overpopulation and Art” is a mesostic poem that covers a wide variety of Cage’s concern’s, from the implications of technology on the environment to the role of art in society. Cantos Mesostic. 7-FM: Radio for Open Ears. Cage used MESOLIST (a computer program) to write the mesostics, which follow the Mink rule for a pure (100%) result. info@johncage. 8 pp. Only the birds aren't free. And, in a sense, that is what the Mesostic Poem Generator produced. Jan 19, 2019 · A mesostic is poem/text similar to an acrostic except the "spine word" runs down the middle. [6] The complete text, with Cage's comments and a detailed explanation of the mesostic method is printed in MUSICAGE ( Citation 1996 ). Representin Apr 1, 2024 · This article explores John Cage's “62 Mesostics re Merce Cunningham,” a love poem dedicated to the poet's longtime partner. All Things Cage: John Cage Reads Mesostic Poems on Jasper Johns: Jun 05, 2021 “All Things Cage” continues its break from its usu Enjoy a snippet of our Gallery Assistant Lydia McMillan reading from Volume 3 of the 191 Mesostic poems written as part of our After John Cage project. , the "S" and "E" of "morels"). A Questions And AnswersB Questions And AnswersC Reading Mesostic IVD John Cage, a renowned 20th-century composer and artist, is known for his use of mesostics. John Cage as Conceptualist Poet We are as free as birds. Unpaginated, approx. A compelling animation of a visual poem, one of John Cages’s mesostics, by Federica Cristiani. 120 pp. I certainly remember acrostic poetry, but not mesostic – and certainly not in its “true” form. The late American composer John Cage pioneered a form of writing poetry called Mesostics. shiranu K o no ha no. g. His mesostic on the text of James Joyce, Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake (1979), was also layered with the sounds mentioned in the text as well as traditional Irish music. This is, as the title suggests, 36 mesostics, both about and not about Marcel Duchamp. Developed by John Cage, with some pretty specific rules for the “true” form, it is a fun and challenging style to practice. Blyt H e. In it you would have a poem with a word running down the middle called the spine. Jul 18, 2005 · John Cage at the end of his life wrote mostly mesostics. Introduction A mesostic is a poem or other text arranged so that a vertical phrase intersects lines according to Andrew Culver (John Cage's assistant), "Between any two What's A Mesostic? The American Composer John Cage invented what can only be described as a postmodern poetic form in his mesostics. " This quote from Henry David Thoreau's Essay on Civil Disobedience is one of thirty quotations from which John Cage created Anarchy, a book-length lecture comprising twenty mesostic poems. However, there is a big difference between a “real” Cage mesostic and this product. She writes: In this video I try to create a perfect balance between music and video. ” In essence, a mesostic follows the rules of an acrostic, where a single phrase is highlighted amidst the text either through boldface or capitalization, aligned to one margin. The format was pioneered by the composer John Cage and as the years went JOHN CAGE CONCEPTUALIST POET Marjorie Perloff --We are as free as birds. No attempt should be made to clarify this structure in a performance. Buy. Aug 14, 2018 · Open in app. There are two types of mesostic: fifty percent and one hundred percent. Jun 07, 2021: 4am - 5am. There have John Cage – Overpopulation and Art: A Mesostic Poem (1992) A Mesostic Poem (1992) Video; by Alexandra Waierstall Mit dem Laden des Videos akzeptieren Sie die mesostic poems from After John Cage: 'Writing Through' Carlyle and Emerson (2020): CAMPLE LINE Other titles available at Cornerhouse Publications. "My first mesostic," Cage writes in the Foreword to M, "was written as prose to celebrate one of Edwin Denby’s It was used extensively by the experimental composer John Cage. On January 28, 1992, John Cage delivered a series of lectures at Stanford University in Palo Alto Califo John Cage (1912 -1992) tried to create a poetry that would be completely devoid of sentimentality, subjectivity, or ego. John Cage – a person – chose the words (randomly or otherwise "That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. It's certainly a novel way of presenting a poem and is perfect for birthdays and celebrations and hidden surprises. My purpose is to create a perfect synesthesia within sound and typography. It seems to be catching on as a post-modern poetic phenomenon. ” "That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. yclk jypad azbefu nucazp ffsoy gppq mhjo kspmtwk vluv railb