Happy Birthday, John Cage!

…from PennSound, Jacket2 and of course anyone who

…would like to join the worldwide chorus of well-wishers celebrating what would have been John Cage's 100th birthday, and we've got recordings and texts, both old and new, for you to enjoy.

First, here's a short PennSound playlist of Cage-related resources, which includes everything from Cage's own writings, poetry and performance inspired by Cage, excerpts from conversations and interviews in which poets discuss Cage's influence on their work, and even full-length lectures by noted Cage scholars:

• Jerry Rothenberg reads Cage's "Lecture on Nothing" (2:10): MP3
• Marjorie Perloff's talk, "Watchman, Spy and Dead Man: Frank O' Hara, Jasper Johns, and John Cage in the Sixties" (1:01:24): MP3
• Perloff discusses "The Poetics of Indeterminacy" and John Cage (15:02): MP3
• Chris Funkhouser discusses John Cage and Jackson Mac Low's poetry (1:28): MP3
• Bruce Andrews discusses John Cage (1:47): MP3
• Joan Retallack's lecture, "John Cage's Anarchic Harmony: A Poethical Wager" (55:16): MP3
• Danny Snelson discusses Cage's Cartridge Music (5:21): MP3
• Anne Waldman reads from "Pieces of an Hour (Dear John Cage...)" (5:45): MP3
• Jackson Mac Low and Ann Tardos perform "Phoneme Dance; in Memoriam John Cage" (5:05): MP3
• Ron Silliman on John Cage's influence (2:57): MP3

Meanwhile, over at Jacket2, we have two very exciting new articles which approach Cage and his work from different angles. Jena Osman frames the online "textual instrument" NewsReader through Cage's I-VI in "Playing the World", while in "Hidden harmonies in John Cage's 'Empty Words,'" Dawn Akemi Sueoka ably balances mycology and linguistics as she explores Cage's deconstruction of Henry David Thoreau's journals.

Happy Birthday, John Cage!…and yet another reminder that Al Fireis' free, open online course in modern poetry starts this Saturday September 10