[silence] The first mesostic?

[Andrew Culver]

Lowell,

 

I had forgotten that these were called "Acrostics". 

 

As I recall, John told me that Norman O. Brown was the one who suggested
"mesostic" since the line went down the middle (perhaps in response to
reading these). Greek mesos is middle and akron is extremity.

 

The rule that no capital letter can appear between itself and the previous
capital letter is the rule Cage employed first. 

 

Put another way: to use one capital letter, the next capital letter cannot
be after it in the same word; and once you do consume a capital letter, you
must take the next word that comes along with the next capital letter in it,
provided that word does not have the third capital letter in it after the
second; and so on.

 

Again as I recall, it was Louis Mink who suggested that this rule would only
constitute a 50% mesostic; a 100% mesostic would require that the subject
capital letter not appear between itself and the previous AND next capital
letter. Or as Cage sometimes expressed it: neither capital letter can appear
between any two adjacent capital letters.

 

The 100% rule produces shorter output when doing a writing through, since
more words are excluded. Cage employed it in some of the later Writings
Through Finnegans Wake specifically in order to have a shorter result.

 

Other terms that came about when Jim Rosenberg and I were programming
mesostic-generating utilities in the 80s:

 

Mesostring - refers to the string of caps down the middle of the page, or
the text from which they come

Mesowords - the words containing the mesostring letters (one per line)

Wing words - all the words to the left or right of the mesowords on each
line

Mesolist - a list of all the words in a source text that are permitted (all
the valid mesowords) for each mesostring letter, conforming to either the
50% or 100% rule.

 

Many people write "mesostics" who are unaware of the rules. Inevitably, this
means they have many more options, and thus make more choices. The
"mesorules" (there you go, a new term) function in much the same way as
chance operations - by imposing an arbitrary constraint on choice, they aid
in the circumvention of likes and dislikes, and render the act of reading
open to divine influence. (To paraphrase a friend.)

 

Andrew Culver

 

 

From: silence-bounces@list.mail.virginia.edu
[mailto:silence-bounces@list.mail.virginia.edu] On Behalf Of Lowell Cross
Sent: March-28-09 3:45 PM
To: Silence List; Ben Basan
Subject: Re: [silence] The first mesostic?

 

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

 

--

To join or leave the Silence mailing list, please go to
https://list.mail.virginia.edu/mailman/listinfo/silence.

You can find searchable list archives at
http://list.mail.virginia.edu/pipermail/silence/

 

Lowell Cross

Professor of Music, Emeritus

The University of Iowa

http://www.LowellCross.com

http://composers21.com/compdocs/crossl.htm

 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://list.mail.virginia.edu/pipermail/silence/attachments/20090329/53fb324f/attachment.html