Jackson Mac Low (1922–2004)

Mac Low was one of the subjects of my Ph.D. dissertation ... so I find it difficult to be objective.

Jackson Mac Low, now sadly gone, was an American master about whom many Americans will never know. This is because he labored mightily in the realm of chance operations, a place people know of (if at all) as the domain of John Cage.

The Pronouns is one of his more accessible works. The individual pieces, which each "celebrate" one of those little-loved but very important words, can be read or show more (as in the original "production" of the piece) danced/performed. As I recall (don't have the book in front of me) the phrases making up the poems were drawn from a deck of cards.

One of the reasons Mac Low rocked is that he constantly made you think about genres and the often illusory boundaries between them. Are these poems? Yes. Are these performance instructions? Yes. Are these a great deal of fun. Yes yes yes. show less

2 wonderfully 'bizarre' plays. When one thinks of a play as a group of people enacting something & dispenses w/ any expectation of linear narrative or overtly connected discursiveness, then the results can consist partially of play conversations like this:

E. Roper
D. Trine-erupt rutin; enact react?
C. Train price pinct; trace-price raper trier count - retap antre price?
E. Reacy-retap.
D. Print trine recap-antre.

For me, things like this that disrupt 'normal' discourse are slate-cleansers: show more they enable the perceivers (whether participants or audience) to reappraise their relationship w/ words & dialogs & to be REFRESHED. & lest you think that these are meant to be harsh disciplinary actions for the sheeplike audience, I remember Jackson telling me (probably in the late 1970s about 15 yrs after these plays were written) that he considered himself to be an entertainer. This sd in the context of discussions about whether one's work was didactic or for amusement, etc - a common discourse. Perhaps most people wdn't be entertained by such a play but I probably wd be & I'm particularly entertained by Jackson's thinking of them as entertaining. show less

Not my favorite Mac Low. To my mind the idea is more interesting than what it produces, but that is always a risk with this kind of work.

Disclaimer: for now, this will not be so much a review as a drooling, full-on piece of blather.

I have been waiting for this book for ... well, I don't know what number of years to type. I've been carrying around a tattered photocopy of the original Black Sparrow edition of 22 Light Poems (plus some scattered, subsequent ones) since some unremembered point in the 1980s when I found them -- by chance, I think -- on one of the floors of the graduate library at IU Bloomington. It was the first show more of Mac Low's work I'd encountered. I would go on to write my Ph.D. dissertation partly on his work.

These remain among my favorite of Mac Low's many works, because they are a mix of chance-generated content and intentional writing ... and they are just, well, full of delights.

Last year I emailed Anne Tardos, who was married to Jackson Mac Low at the time of his death, asking if a complete edition of the Light Poems might ever happen. Lucky me! She wrote back telling me of the forthcoming Chax Press edition, which is the first production of this well-established 'otherstream' poetry publisher following their move to new digs.

A real review will follow, I promise. I'm just so unbelievably glad to have this volume in my much-older-now hands. I can't even give this a rating. show less