I'd like to try to
fill a 'gap' in the labelling schema.
From what I have
been able to glean hither thither and yonder in netland Cage worked with three
variations of the acrostic form during his life.
I'll begin with the
two forms for which Cage and writers/artists/poets following his lead seem to be
in total agreement:
1) The 100% Mesostic
(on which Rod has very kindly been educating and coaching
fluxlisters)
2) The 50% Mesostic
(which was also unambiguously defined by JC, and on which Rod has also been
helping us understand)
The final form is
the one on which there seems (at least to me) to be some ambiguity and some room
for interpretation.
This might be termed
the proto-mesostic, early mesostic, quasi-mesostic or neo-mesostic, depending on
where one places it conceptually or chronologically. In one article about Cage
and acrostics/mesostics this form is the form from which Cage originally coined
the term "mesostic". In this article Cage showed a colleague some "acrostic"
poems that he had written in which the acrostic word/phrase was arranged
vertically down a central spine rather than 'bookending' each line at the
beginning or end (or both as in a double-acrostic). Cage termed these poems as
'mesostics', describing an acrostic form with the the phrase in the middle
(hence 'meso'). He later went on to refine and redefine the form into the 50%
and 100% mesostic.
So the issue is,
what becomes of the "0% mesostic"? It is not an acrostic. It is not 50%
mesostic, nor is it a 100% mesostic. I remain wont to call it a mesostic as that
term seems well-suited to describe an acrostic poem with the phrase down the
middle. In the article by Marjorie Perloff referenced below, Cage is quoted as
saying that he thought that he was writing acrostics until he was corrected -
interestingly his first acrostics were what he later called 50% mesostics -
which continues to leave the name of the basic meso-acrostic in
limbo.
Rather than continue
with polemics, I'd rather engage in constructive dialogue. Is there a term that
can be used and be broadly (i.e. not just among fluxlisters) applied to describe
and include all meso-acrostic forms? Netland is rife with all three
"mesostic" forms.
Allan
Reference
Sites:
Cage, John. Sixty-two Mesostics re: Merce Cunningham (musical score)
New York: Henmar Press, 1971.
John Cage Computer Programs [on-line]
(Andrew
Culver, author. Date of authorship unknown. Accessed November 16, 2003).
Available at: http://anarchicharmony.org/People/Culver/CagePrograms.html
The Music of Verbal Space: John Cage's "What You Say" [on-line]
(Marjorie Perloff, author. Date of authorship
unknown. Accessed November 18, 2003).
Available at:
http://www.ubu.com/papers/perloff02.html
Perloff, Marjorie. Radical Artifice: Writing Poetry in the Age of
Media
Chicago : University of Chicago Press,
1991
Shultis, Christopher. Silencing the Sounded Self: John Cage and the American
Experimental Tradition.
Boston, MA: Northeastern
University Press, 1998.
Weinberger, Eliot. American Poetry Since 1950: Innovators and
Outsiders
New Yorks: Marsilo Publishers,
1993.
