John Cage Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Marjorie Perloff

Critical Essay by Marjorie Perloff

SOURCE: Perloff, Marjorie. “The Music of Verbal Space: John Cage's ‘What You Say ….’” In Sound States: Innovative Poetics and Acoustical Technologies, edited by Adalaide Morris, pp. 129-48. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

In the following essay, Perloff examines the form and content of Cage's mesostic endeavors, arguing that in his mesostic poems, Cage adds musical texture and deeper meaning to the texts he uses for his poems, therefore enhancing the original texts and creating new poetic interpretations.

                                                                                                                                  Syntax, like government, can only be obeyed. It is                               therefore of no use except when you                               have something particular to command such as: Go buy me a bunch of carrots.

(Cage M 215)

As early as 1939, when he was in residence at the Cornish School of Music in Seattle, John Cage investigated the application of electrical technology to music. His first (perhaps the first) electroacoustic composition was...
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