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

#Duende Poetry Reading: John Brandi & Renee Gregorio

…Sept16 #NMpoetry event @ Anasazi Fields Winery, HT @ Elaine Schwartz for timely reminder in a ready to blog format.

Announcing Duende Poetry Series Reading John Brandi & Renée Gregorio Sunday, September 16, 3pm Anasazi Fields Winery Village of Placitas, NM Call (505)867-3062 for Information An astounding free poetry event. Welcome! books for sale and signing, wine, snacks, drinks, a meeting of poetry & friends

Featured Poem on Luzma Umpierre's page

A dual purpose and then some here: new poem, new poets (in sense of new to my personal reading list), new poetry page to add to reader and share.:Being a hurricane season appropriate poem is lagniappe. And who does not need a survival plan? Now to hustle up a few more links and an illustration. for Luzma's New Poem (a regular feature on her page), Survival Plan by J.L. Torres

To live in Puerto Rico
you need a survival plan
El Departamento de Ai Bendito
recommends one from below:



The Armageddon Plan

Zoetrope: All-Story

…Late night posts tend to the minimalist…better that than incoherence…

Zoetrope: All-Story is a quarterly literary publication founded by Francis Ford Coppola in 1997 to explore the intersection of story and art, fiction and film.  

Along with new stories, each edition of the magazine presents a Classic Reprint—a previously published short story that inspired a great film—to illustrate the narrative relationship between the art forms. Previous Classic Reprints include Liu Yi-chang's "Intersection" (which inspired Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love), Steven Millhauser's "Eisenheim the Illusionist" (Neil Burger's The Illusionist), Alice Munro's "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" (Sarah Polley's Away From Her), and Paul Auster's "Auggie Wren's Christmas Story" (Wayne Wang's Smoke). More about  ...

Contests. Submissions. Online workshops. Artwork. Community. Virtual Studio. New and classic short stories... and more at Zoetrope: All-Story

A History of Book-Pulping

…and other sad fates for the beleaguered (or so we are continually told) book in its print incarnation. Even innocent, "unsullied" books face the same fate. From dust unto dust and from books unto books…and other fates. 

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt hasn’t said what it plans to do with all the copies of Imagine, Jonah Lehrer’s sullied best seller on the science of creativity, that it has yanked from shelves. But most book people agree that the copies will eventually be pulped, or dissolved into a milky liquid and reconstituted as clean paper. In this regard, at least, Imagine has plenty of company. Every year, millions of books are sent to the “cruel machines,” as one young editor calls them, simply because their sales didn’t meet projections. The process is tidily symmetrical: from the vat to the store and back to the vat. 

What eureka moment gave us book recycling?

There is a sense of purpose, contrapasso, to repurposing the repurposer. Not all instances are poetic justice, intentionally or accidentally. Read the rest at A History of Book-Pulping in New York Magazine and consider the future of book recycling in the age of e-books...or the oxymoron of recycling e-books. Where does book art, books as art, fit in here?