Revisiting my
revisitation:
From Perloff's article it seems
that Cage may not have used the "0% mesostic" or meso-acrostic himself. But the
same article (same paragraph) does suggest that the term 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.
"My first mesostic,"
Cage writes in the Foreword to M, "was written as prose to celebrate one
of Edwin Denby's birthdays. The following ones, each letter of the name being on
its own line, were written as poetry. A given letter capitalized does not
occur between it and the preceding capitalized letter. I thought I was
writing acrostics, but Norman O. Brown pointed out that they could properly be
called 'mesostics' (row not down the edge but down the middle)" (M 1) (http://www.ubu.com/papers/perloff02.html).
The more I learn,
the less I seem to know!
Rod, what do you
think?
I understand a bit
better now why you are reluctant to call meso-acrostics mesostics since it seems
as though Cage started with the 50% form without first writing mesostics which
did not also have at least one of the two letter-rules. Still, from what I've
read in the last few days, it seems that the term mesostic could still be
applied to meso-acrostics that do not fully conform to Cage's
form.
I don't know. I
still like the term mesostic for any acrostic-like poem that lines up through
the centre spine, but can better understand now why you would not agree.
Maybe something like:
1) mesostic
(non-conforming)
2) simple
mesostic
3)
meso-acrostic
4) Brown
Mesostic
5) non-Cage
mesostic
6) basic
mesostic
7) ?
...suggestions?
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] .com] On Behalf Of Allan Revich
Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2006 11:59 AM
To: FLUXLIST
Subject: FLUXLIST: mesostic/acrostic/exhaustic etc. - is there a mesoway?
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:
http://www.euph0r1a.net/ (website of Matthew McCabe, a Florida PhD student and
composer/geek) he lists the following in his bibliography (http://www.euph0r1a.net/mesostomatic/biblio.html):
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.
