Articles - August 2012

Playing the world

Poetry generated from a source text has been around at least since 1920, when Tristan Tzara wrote his instructions for how to make a Dada poem. What follows is an argument for reading the procedures of such works as texts themselves, worthy of analysis. These procedures signify in ways that are as complex as the results they yield. In other words, just as language is circumscribed by its cultural use, so are these seemingly neutral processes.

Hidden harmonies in John Cage's 'Empty Words'

Mushrooms grow best on shit — specifically, the shit of “corn-fed, hard-worked horses, which have been bedded down on wheat straw.”[1] Some mushrooms pop up after a rain, and grow in circles called “fairy rings,” only to disappear a few hours later. Some mushrooms have names like “Angel of Death” and “Death Cap,” and cause nausea, vomiting, delirium, coma, and — yes — death.