[silence] The first mesostic?

[Lowell Cross]

Greetings,

In the small limited edition book (500 copies) entitled Marcel  
Duchamp and John Cage, there are "36 Acrostics re and not re Duchamp"  
by Cage, with further designations "Spoleto, July 1970" and "A given  
letter capitalized does not occur among the letters between it and  
the proceeding [sic] capitalized letter."  I believe that these  
"acrostics" could indeed be mesostics, because the vertical elements  
intersect the horizontal lines away from the beginnings of those  
lines, rather than at the beginnings of those lines.  Here is the  
first example:

	a utility aMong
                    swAllows
               is theiR
                 musiC.
                      thEy produce it mid-air
      to avoid coLliding.

I do not know of any earlier (pre-1970) examples, but apparently they  
exist.  The publication is a picture book with photos by Shigeko  
Kubota, documenting the 1968 Cage-Duchamp Reunion performance in  
Toronto (chess and electronic music).  The book itself is undated,  
copyright John Cage, Shigeko Kubota; published by Takeyoshi Miyazawa.

Lowell Cross


On Mar 28, 2009, at 12:53 PM, Ben Basan wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I'm wondering if anyone out there would know when Cage first started
> writing mesostics. I'm getting a lot of conflicting information.
> Marjorie Perloff indicates that the first one was in 1970 . I think
> she's basing this on Cage's recollection of writing them in or around
> Endwin Denby's loft. But then James Pritchett suggests that Cage
> started writing them before the late 60s (no real start date given)
> although only for friends. Pritchett's account must be more accurate
> than Perloff's based on what I do know (such as the graphical
> mesostics starting from 1967 up on UBU!).  However, I haven't really
> been able to locate anything more precise than 'before the late 60s.'
> What I am trying to suss out here is roughly when Cage's interest in
> applying procedures/ constraints on his writing began.
>
> Thanks!
> Ben
>
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Lowell Cross
Professor of Music, Emeritus
The University of Iowa
http://www.LowellCross.com
http://composers21.com/compdocs/crossl.htm



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