Jackson Mac Low
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Jackson Mac Low (September 12, 1922 – December 8, 2004) was an American poet, performance artist, composer and playwright, known to most readers of poetry as a practioneer of systematic chance operations and other non-intentional compositional methods in his work, which Mac Low first experienced in the musical work of John Cage, Earle Brown, and Christian Wolff.
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[edit] Life
He received his associate's degree from the University of Chicago in 1943, where he continued study in philosophy and literature into 1945, and his bachelor's degree in Ancient Greek from Brooklyn College in 1953.
[edit] Composition
One type of non-intentional composition that he used relied on an algorithm he dubbed "diastic," by analogy to acrostic. He used words or phrases drawn from source material to spell out a source word or phrase, with the first word having the first letter of the source, the second word having the second letter, and so forth, reading through (dia in Greek) the source. During the last 25 years of his life, he often collaborated with Anne Tardos.
[edit] Awards
Mac Low won the 1999 Wallace Stevens award.
[edit] From "Insect Assassins"
Injects no survive. Efforts control the
Animal survive. Survive. Animal survive. Survive. Injects no survive.
In nasty spitting eye cost. This
Assassin spitting spitting assassin spitting spitting in nasty spitting
Insectivorous nutriment species encounter Charles to
Are species species are species species insectivorous nutriment species
[edit] Selected Works
- 22 Light Poems (Black Sparrow, 1968)
- Stanzas for Iris Lezak (Something Else Press, 1971)
- The Pronouns (Station Hill Press, 1979)
- The Virginia Woolf Poems (Burning Deck, 1985)
- Words nd Ends from Ez (Avenue B, 1989)
- Pieces o' Six: Thirty-Three Poems in Prose (Sun and Moon Classics, 1991)
- Twenties (Segue, January 1992)
- 42 Merzgedichte in memoriam Kurt Schwitters (Station Hill Press, 1994)
- Doings: Assorted Performance Pieces 1955–2002 (Granary Books, 2005)
[edit] Source
- Von Gunden, Heidi (1983). The Music of Pauline Oliveros. ISBN 0-8108-1600-8.
[edit] External links
- Jackson Mac Low website
- A Blog Catalog in Honor of Mac Low's Birthday, with images of his books
- Academy of American Poets
- SUNY Buffalo Electronic Poetry Center
- In Remembrance of Jackson Mac Low EOAGH (Issue#2) includes poems and remembrances on-line
- The Register of Jackson Mac Low Papers 1923-1995 @ Mandeville Special Collections Library, University of California, San Diego
- Jackson Mac Low in Virtual Space a remembrance by Barrett Watten, including links to other Mac Low sites
- Works by or about Jackson Mac Low in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
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