Fwd: Re: Questions about Cage's mesostics

From Marc Thorman--I think it was not sent to the list and should have been.

Marcthor97@xxxxxxx wrote:

From: Marcthor97@xxxxxxx
Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 14:03:02 EDT
Subject: Re: Questions about Cage's mesostics
To: rob_haskins@xxxxxxxxx

In a message dated 5/25/04 11:02:40 AM Eastern Daylight Time, rob_haskins@xxxxxxxxx [quotes]:

I mean, the visual
element appears to have been very important to him, or
else, "I-VI" would not have had to be published in the
shape it was... do you think that the answer might be
found in his statement that "composing's one thing,
performing's another, listening's a third. What can
they have to do with one another?"

I think this does apply to the poetry as well. One reason the poems appear in mesostic form is purely visual--it is a unique and (I think) beautiful visual format. Certainly our appreciation of, say, a Shakespeare sonnet, is partly due to the way the form is displayed on the page, an effect that would be diminished if the sonnet were simply printed as straightforward prose sentences. The mesostic format also allowed Cage to specify timings for recitations of the poems, using (notated) timings in minutes/seconds in conjuction with the vertical axis of the texts. I don't recall that Cage ever used the term "visual poetry" to describe any of his writings, although the visual aspects of his texts are more or less important depending on the piece. However, his texts often have obvious relation to "concrete poetry" and in every case I can think of Cage relate s visual formating to timing. As for the Cunningham mesostics, I think if you look closely you will see that none of the individuals letters is obscured, but they do touch adjacent letters. In the case of the CUnningham mesostics the visual aspects are directly tied to performance, as you will understand if you read Cage's instructions for  performing these pieces. Good luck on your project.

Marc

Rob Haskins
Eastman School of Music
rob_haskins@xxxxxxxxx
http://robhaskins.net

"Heroism doesn't consist in brilliantly combatting someone else. . . .  What is heroic is to accept the situation in which you find yourself."  -- John Cage