Jackson Mac Low at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 26 March 1971

CLASSIFICATION

Swallow ID:
1296
Partner Institution:
Concordia University
Source Collection Label:
SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds
Series:
The Poetry Series
Sub Series:
SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds

ITEM DESCRIPTION

Title:
Jackson Mac Low at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 26 March 1971
Title Source:
Cataloguer
Title Note:
"JACKSON MacLOW experiential poetry Recorded March 26, 1971 3.75 ips, 1/2 track 1 mil. tape Poorish technical quality" written on sticker on the back of the tape's box. "JACKSON MacLOW -1 I006/SR31.1" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. "Side 1 I006-11-031.1" written on sticker on the reel. "JACKSON MacLOW experiential poetry Recorded March 26, 1971 3.75 ips, 1/2 track 1 mil. tape Poorish technical quality" written on sticker on the back of the tape's box. "JACKSON MacLOW -2 I006/SR31.2" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. "I006-11-031.2" written on sticker on the reel.
Language:
English
Production Context:
Documentary recording
Genre:
Reading: Poetry
Persistent URL:
http://archives.concordia.ca/I086
Identifiers:
[I006-11-031.1, I006-11-031.2]

Rights

CREATORS

Name:
Mac Low, Jackson
Dates:
1922-2004
URL:
http://viaf.org/viaf/80245668
Role:
"Author", "Performer"
Notes:
Jackson Mac Low was born on September 12, 1922 in Chicago, Illinois, and became not only a poet, but a playwright, an editor, a literary critic, a translator, a teacher, a composer and a performer of verbal and theatrical works. As a child, he studied music and poetry. Studying for an Associate in Arts degree in philosophy, poetics and literature at the University of Chicago from 1939 to 1943, Mac Low enrolled in Brooklyn College (now the City of University of New York) to pursue an A. B. degree in Greek, graduating cum laude. Jackson Mac Low was the poetry editor of Why? from 1950-1954. After holding a job as an editorial assistant at Funk & Wagnalls from 1957-1958, and again from 1961-1962, he taught at New York University for seven years. Mac Low married painter Iris Lezak in 1962 and had two children with her, however they divorced by 1978. Mac Low put on three plays, The Marrying Maiden: a play of changes from 1960-61, Verdurous Sanguinaria, 1961, and Questions & Answers...A Topical Play in 1963. He published his first set of plays The Twin Plays: Port-au-Prince & Adams County Illinois in 1963 (Something Else Press). The Pronouns- A Collection of 40 Dances-For the Dancers was first self-published in 1964, but was re-published numerous times in later years. Mac Low published a series of Light Poems, August Light Poems in 1967 (s.n. press), 22 Light Poems in 1968 (Black Sparrow Press), 23rd Light Poem: for Larry Eigner in 1969 (Tetrad Press), 38th Light Poem: In Memoriam Buster Keaton in 1975 (Permanent Press) and 54th Light Poem: For Ian Tyson in 1978 (Membrane Press). Stanzas for Iris Lezak, though written in 1968 was only published in 1972 (Something Else Press). Publishing over twenty other books and performance pieces, Mac Low’s most noted works include Asymmetries 1-260: The First Section of a Series of 501 Performance Poems (Printed Editions, 1976), Antic Quatrains (Toothpaste Press for Bookslinger, 1980), Representative Works, 1938-1985 (Roof Books,1996) and Barnesbook: Four Poems Derived from Sentences by Djuna Barnes (Sun & Moon Press, 1996). Mac Low has won many awards, notably the American Academy of Arts and Sciences grant (1971), Creative Arts Public fellowship in multimedia (1973-1974) and in poetry (1976-77), Madeline Sadin Award in 1974, PEN American Center grant 1974, National Endowment for the Arts fellowship (1979) and the Tanning Prize (1999). In 1990, he married the visual artist, poet and composer Anne Tardos. He then taught creative writing at numerous universities worldwide. Jackson Mac Low died of complications from a stroke on December 8, 2004.

CONTRIBUTORS

MATERIAL DESCRIPTION

Recording Type:
Analogue
AV Type:
Audio
Material Designation:
Reel to Reel
Physical Composition:
Magnetic Tape
Extent:
1/4 inch
Playing Speed:
3 3/4 ips
Track Configuration:
Half-track
Playback Mode:
Mono
Generations:
Duplicate
Tape Brand:
Scotch
Sound Quality:
Poor
Recording Type:
Analogue
AV Type:
Audio
Material Designation:
Reel to Reel
Physical Composition:
Magnetic Tape
Extent:
1/4 inch
Playing Speed:
3 3/4 ips
Track Configuration:
Half-track
Playback Mode:
Mono
Sound Quality:
Poor

DIGITAL FILE DESCRIPTION

File URL:
https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/jackson_maclow_i006-11-031-2.mp3
Show Content
File Path:
files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3
Duration:
00:27:57
Size:
67.1 MB
Content:
jackson_maclow_i006-11-031-2.mp3 [File 2 of 2] Unknown Speaker 00:00:00 This is the one you wanted some light percussive stuff? Jackson Mac Low 00:00:04 Yeah, but very easy on it, not very, you know, keep the amplitude down to, no higher than mezzo piano. Did someone take one from here? I'm supposed to have one and ten. Try to start with the earlier ones and then go into the later ones if possible. Those with the first, the earlier numbers should be on mic first. Those with numbers between two and five I guess you would have. So that the [unintelligible] will hear the earlier ones more than the later ones. You can prolong any of the phonemes at the ends of lines. This is another piece called [unintelligible]. Unknown 00:01:49 Ambient Sound [recorded performance plays; title uncertain]. Jackson Mac Low 00:03:00 Performs "Bluebird Asymmetries" accompanied by audience members and recording. Jackson Mac Low 00:12:35 I have one last one that none of these people have yet seen, and so this one has no rules, that is, the others have some rules for how you put in silences, these will, these...In the summer of ‘69 I did a project for the Los Angeles Museum of Art , an art technology show that's going to open this May. Unfortunately, my machine was bombed out, the corporation seems to be on the rocks, they're not providing the machine, but luckily I had poems that appeared on cathode ray tubes or something called a programmable film reader, and the words appear at the same time we sent the same impulses through an audio system and they turned out to be, well the oboe family, everything down from sopranino oboe to double, double, double bass oboe according to how long the lines were and so I did quite a few poems, this particular one is "The", and it's the last one I did, and tried to grab I guess three pages each, just use whatever discretion you want to, and listen, listen, listen. Earlier I had very strict rules governed by chance operations and so on, in reading these, well, in reading these kind of simultaneous works, and more and more I came to the, well I always had the principal of the most important things was to listen hard to everything that was happening, including whatever was happening in the room, whatever’s happening outside and so on, but more and more I relied on the readers to judge when to come in, and in--perform--these I found, this is one very long print-out of this particular poem. I don't want to--I think in, I don't remember, someplace there's a description of the idea of how they were made and all that, but what I got was a number of messages that, of which the units were permuted, the earliest form of my program was simply permuting the words in each, single words in each message. Later on I was able to get carriage returns and things like that so that in this, each message is a group of short sentences, usually about the same thing, and you'll, so that on the page each message looks like a sort of a stanza or strophe, and the groups of sentences--any number of the groups of sentences from any one of these strophe units may appear at any time according to way the thing is programmed. Does everybody have about three pages? Let's just make it... Jackson Mac Low 00:16:24 Performs "The" accompanied by audience members. Jackson Mac Low 00:27:57 Thank you. END 00:27:57 [Cut off abruptly].
Notes:
Jackson Mac Low reads from Stanzas for Iris Lezak (Something Else Press, 1971) and performs a number of pieces accompanied by recordings and audience participation. 00:00- Jackson Mac Low introduces poem “[inaudible word] and Ladders” 01:49- Performs “[inaudible word] and Ladders” 03:00- Performs “Blue Bird Asymmetries” [INDEX: from 21 Matched Asymmetries: The 10 Bluebird Asymmetries] 12:35- Introduces “The” [INDEX: Los Angeles Museum of Art project: Art and Technology program, 1969, reading permutations, chance operations, principals of Mac Low’s poetry reading techniques] 16:24- Performs “The” 27:57- END OF RECORDING
Content Type:
Sound Recording
File URL:
https://files.spokenweb.ca/concordia/sgw/audio/all_mp3/jackson_maclow_i006-11-031-1.mp3
Show Content
File Path:
files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3
Duration:
01:32:11
Size:
221.3 MB
Content:
jackson_maclow_i006-11-031-1.mp3 [File 1 of 2] Unknown 00:00:02 Ambient Sound [music; wood flute]. Jackson Mac Low 00:00:36 Reads "Glass Buildings" accompanied by music. Jackson Mac Low 00:01:28 Reads “5.2.3.6.5., the 3rd biblical poem” [accompanied by music and other voices]. Jackson Mac Low 00:05:27 From “Judges 6:4 to First Samuel 1:10”, written Saturday, 1st January 1955. Jackson Mac Low 00:05:40 Reads [“On the Glorious Burning of the Stars and Stripes in the Sheep Meadow in Central Park around about Noon on April 15, 1967 1967 May”]. Jackson Mac Low 00:07:20 Next is a “Word event for George Brecht” on the words 'anti-personnel bombs', this is a kind of poem that can be done on any words. I did it first on these words at a reading in New York where the Russian poet Voznesensky joined some American poets in an anti-war reading. Unknown 00:07:42 [Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. Jackson Mac Low 00:07:43 Performs “Word event for George Brecht” accompanied by recording. Jackson Mac Low 00:21:12 All the people who are going to read the "Number to Symmetries" please come up for the microphone...These were a group of a hundred poems, of the form that has holes in it, that is the format of the poems are used to indicate silences, where there's white space on the page, they're silences. Some of the phonemes on the ends of words are prolonged, and others are stuttered. I'm not sure that any of them that are stuttered are in this particular batch. I wrote about 500 of these in late 1961, early--late, let's see, late ‘60 and early ‘61. I wish you'd say your own names, because I didn't get all your names down in the book, be sure to write your names in my book when you leave. Would the people participating just tell their names to the audience because I don't know all of them? Audience Participants 00:22:47 Peter Boxer, [unintelligible], Walter Katjetski, Robert Graham, Jenny Burn, [unintelligible], Ivan [Lourd (?)]. Jackson Mac Low 00:22:59 Remember when you get to the end of one, then the next person will take the mic. Audience Member 1 00:23:03 Do we circulate while we’re off mic? Jackson Mac Low 00:23:06 Yeah, if you want. Yeah, that would be very nice. Unknown 00:23:26 Ambient Sound [voices]. Jackson Mac Low 00:23:40 Yeah, just go after...Would you rather have these than the book? Would you rather have papers or the book? Probably easier for you to just put the book down and say “I’m here.”...No, I’m just going to do these. Alright, does anybody have a lot of short ones? I have a few more...So, you prolong those phonemes and [unintelligible] repeated this one...Yeah...Do you need any...Anybody have lots of short ones? Alright. [Unintelligible]. Okay, I would say move a little bit that way. Now those without mics, I think you might be picked up by the mics of those who have them to at least to get on the tape. Okay. Jackson Mac Low 00:25:23 Performs "Number to Symmetries" accompanied by audience members. Jackson Mac Low 00:41:01 In 1960, just before I wrote this group, I wrote a group of poems called the...Stanzas for Iris Lezak, they're--this is the summer of ‘60, they're presently being published this year by the Something Else Press , which is nominally in New York and really in Newhall , California , at the centre of the earthquake. I'll first read a short group, solo, and then read one in a duet with the--of the earlier performance of it. "Poe and Psychoanalysis". Jackson Mac Low 00:42:30 Reads "Poe and Psychoanalysis" from Stanzas for Iris Lezak. Jackson Mac Low 00:42:57 Reads "Marseille" from Stanzas for Iris Lezak. Jackson Mac Low 00:44:11 Reads "London" from Stanzas for Iris Lezak. Jackson Mac Low 00:44:48 Reads "Sydney" from Stanzas for Iris Lezak. Jackson Mac Low 00:44:58 Reads "Berlin" from Stanzas for Iris Lezak. Jackson Mac Low 00:45:12 Reads "Madrid" from Stanzas for Iris Lezak. Jackson Mac Low 00:45:21 Reads "Rome" from Stanzas for Iris Lezak. Unknown 00:45:59 [Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. Unknown 00:46:00 Ambient sound [music and voices]. Jackson Mac Low 00:47:37 I'll explain a bit, I took these from whatever I was reading from about April to October of 1960, the group of place-name poems were from scatter paper called The National Enquirer . This is from the, an article in the Scientific American ... Unknown 00:48:05 [Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. Jackson Mac Low 00:48:06 Reads [“Asymmetry from Scientific American” from Stanzas for Iris Lezak]. Audience 00:55:20 Applause. Jackson Mac Low 00:55:27 This is a, a number of these are collages of various times and places, as well as spontaneity in this room here, on two of these tapes, you will hear a lady's voice along with my own. I did a concert of my works along with Jim Tenney and Max Neuhaus , in town hall, New York in September of 1966, and still earlier Max Neuhaus had realized this particular piece which is a piece produced by subjecting the electric typewriter keyboard to randomization by random numbers, so it looks like a lot of different characters from the electric typewriter, Neuhaus recorded it at the University of Illinois laboratory, I guess some time earlier in ‘66 or maybe ‘65 and then put it down four octaves. He and another guy were reading from--the readers read from this in any way they wish, now I'll have the live readers to come up here...So then in... in this ‘66 concert, I did it as a duet, reading through the negatives from which this was printed, the blinking light, and a Jeanne Lee , a very fine blues singer was in the various works that were performed in that concert, and she's on the duet that you hear, that you will hear. A year ago, or a little more, I guess in April of last year I performed this in a class at NYU along with the-oh and the Neuhaus tape was along with that performance in NYU, then the town hall performance and the Neuhaus tape--all three were in the NYU performance along with the NYU performance, so now you'll hear it at least four different times, plus the present, something like that. Jackson Mac Low 00:58:23 Performs unnamed piece accompanied by recording. Jackson Mac Low 01:06:11 I'll do a piece called "Fifth Gatha'', which is another group piece, uh, the readers who learned it, please come up with copies, and I'll have to toss around tapes for a few minutes here. I might explain that this particular piece is one of a series I call "Gathas" that are written on graphed paper, they by chance operations. I take the mantra of one religion or another, this happens to be the great prajnaparamita mantra, which is basic to Northern Buddhism and Zen Buddhism, and it's arranged by the method so that it falls over an axis of 'a's, 'u's and 'm's that is the word 'aum', wherever a's, u's and m's appear in the mantra they may cross the mantra, there aren't many u's in this particular one, so there isn't any--nothing crossing the u-line, you may be able to see the empty gap there. The mantra in question is "Gone, gone to the other shore, quite gone over the other shore, boldly, wisdom, spaha, pray. Guthe, guthe, paraguthe [unintelligible]..." you may, those of you who know zen may be more familiar with it in its Japanese version, which is sort of a Japanization of the Sanskrit. The group version of it was done in the Chelsea Hotel , I think in '67, but the German editor and producer, Carl Weissner , the whisper version you hear, I did at home, earlier, maybe in ‘66, ‘65, ‘66. Jackson Mac Low 01:09:35 Performs "Fifth Gatha" accompanied by audience members and recording. Jackson Mac Low 01:26:20 The last poem I read was also from Stanzas for Iris Lezak. It's based on the Tibetan prayer to the gurus and it's translated by W.Y. Evans-Wentz . The next piece is all about bluebirds. It’s again--it uses the form of...In recent years I've gone back to writing poems in the form of the asymmetries that I wrote in ‘60 and ‘61, but these tended to cluster around one subject matter. There's one in the current Aspen Magazine about young turtles, no one really knows where they go once they've hatched, and they know when they come back, but they don't really know what they do in between hatching and there is a natural history magazine, there was a caption to a picture, and so there was a record in the current Aspen, that's of that group. This is the first one of this type that I did on bluebirds, was for a group event that a number of us, let’s see, Iris Lezak, Emmett Williams , Carol [Bouget (?)] and [Jet Yalka (?)] and I did a collective event for the University of Syracuse at Utica , which we called, which Emmett named for us ["Jack-a-Jurismatics (?)”] and so one of the pieces I wrote for that was this bluebirds piece. Emmett Williams has a beautiful work that has bluebirds in it, it's a permutation poem that also appears in this anthology, although this is an anthology that La Monte Young got together in ‘60 and we--‘60 and ‘61 I guess, and he had many difficulties between the time that it was designed and the time it was printed and finally got it out at first in 1963, it's called An Anthology of--well, various things--Chance Operations, and well I don't know what, concept art, anti-art, indeterminacy improvisation, meaningless work, natural disasters and so on. And well, just recently, our first edition is now a sort of a collector's item, sells around a hundred, but recently a German publisher re-published it for us and the current, the new editions is going for $8.50, so if anyone is--I don't have copies here but I'll be happy to send any to anybody. Contains work mostly, a lot of it is music, musical scores, there's some other poetry, including the Emmett Williams mention. The Emmett Williams poem does all the variations, does all the permutations of one group of things, "somewhere bluebirds are flying high in the sky, in the cellar even blackbirds are extinct", each of those is considered a run unit, and all the possible permutations of them are written out "somewhere bluebirds are flying high in the sky, in the cellar even blackbirds are extinct". I'd love to read it, but it's very long. Usually we read it with five different voices, each taking the unit and once in a while, people get through it without breaking down laughing. [Unintelligible]. This was taken from, the bluebird asymmetries were from two...were from two encyclopedia articles on bluebirds, one I think the Audubon Encyclopedia, and I've forgotten what the other one was. They're very complimentary. The voices you hear are, you heard in another performance of Leslie [Sixfin (?)], Amy [Spurling (?)] and Harvey [Lesain (?)], along with four of my students at the Mannes School of Music and about done in 1966, or 1967, I think it was May of 1967 that this was done. There's a specially gifted group I felt that I happened to get together in that class, just towards the end we were doing mostly, we were just doing ordinary grammar English, I'm an English teacher, for my bread. END 01:32:11
Notes:
Jackson Mac Low reads from Stanzas for Iris Lezak (Something Else Press, 1971) and performs a number of pieces accompanied by recordings and audience participation. 00:00- Flute is being played, Jackson Mac Low speaks [inaudible] 00:36- Jackson Mac Low performs “Last Buildings” first line “When fiery water...” 01:28- Performs unknown poem first line “Sustenance...52365 the first biblical poem...” 05:27- Performs unknown poem first line “From Judges 6:4 to first Samuel 1:10...” 05:40- Performs unknown poem first line “And the glorious burning of the stars and stripes...” 07:20- Introduces “Word event for George Brecht” using the words “anti-personnel bomb” [INDEX: George Brecht, word event on ‘anti-personnel bombs’, New York City, Russian poet Voznesensky, anti-war reading] 07:43- Performs “Word event for George Brecht”. 21:12- Introduces “Number to Symmetries” [INDEX: Audience participation readings, intentional/quasi-intentional/non-intentional methods, chance methods of composing poetry] 25:23- Performs “Number to Symmetries” 41:13.73- END OF RECORDING 00:00- Introduces “Poem Psychoanalysis” [INDEX: Stanzas for Iris Lezak, Something Else Press, Newhall, California] 01:16- Reads “Poem Psychoanalysis” 01:44- Reads “Marseille” 02:57- Reads “London” 03:35- Reads “Sydney” 03:45- Reads “Berlin” 03:58- Reads “Madrid” 04:08- Reads “Rome” 06:23- Explains the last set of place-name poems, Introduces “Scientific American” poems [INDEX: National Enquirer Magazine, Scientific American Magazine] 06:52- Reads “Scientific American” poems 14:13- Introduces unknown performance [INDEX: NYU and Town Hall recordings] 17:09- Performs unknown performance [random numbers and letters] [INDEX: Jim (James) Newhouse, New York City Town Hall, University of Illinois, Jeanne Lee (Blues Singer), New York University] 24:57- Introduces “Fifth Gata” [INDEX: Zen Mantras, Recording at the Chelsea Hotel, Karl Wiesner] 28:21- Performs “Fifth Gata” 44:48- Introduces unknown poem from Stanzas for Iris Lezak [INDEX: W.Y. Evan-Wentz, Tibetan Prayer, Aspen Magazine, Turtles, blue birds, reading by Emmett Williams, Carl Bouget, Jet Yalka [sp?] at the University of Syracuse Utica called “Jack-a- Jurismatics” [sp?], permutation of poetry, Anthology of Chance Operations by La Monte Young, concept art, anti-art, meaningless work, natural disasters, Emmett William’s bluebird permutation poems, Audubon Encyclopedia of Birds, Amy Sixfan, Amy Spurling, Harvey Lessah [sp?], Manne’s School of Music] 50:58.11- END OF RECORDING.
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Jackson Mac Low Tape Box 1 - Back
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Drew Bernet
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Jackson Mac Low Tape Box 2 - Back
Credit:
Drew Bernet
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Dates

Date:
1971 3 26
Type:
Performance Date
Source:
Accompanying Material
Notes:
Date written on sticker on the back of the tape's box and in written announcement "SIR GEORGE WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY POETRY 5"

LOCATION

Address:
1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Venue:
Hall Building Room H-651
Latitude:
45.4972758
Longitude:
-73.57893043
URL:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/22080570
Notes:
Location specified in written announcement "What Goes On!"

CONTENT

Contents:
jackson_maclow_i006-11-031-1.mp3 [File 1 of 2] Unknown 00:00:02 Ambient Sound [music; wood flute]. Jackson Mac Low 00:00:36 Reads "Glass Buildings" accompanied by music. Jackson Mac Low 00:01:28 Reads “5.2.3.6.5., the 3rd biblical poem” [accompanied by music and other voices]. Jackson Mac Low 00:05:27 From “Judges 6:4 to First Samuel 1:10”, written Saturday, 1st January 1955. Jackson Mac Low 00:05:40 Reads [“On the Glorious Burning of the Stars and Stripes in the Sheep Meadow in Central Park around about Noon on April 15, 1967 1967 May”]. Jackson Mac Low 00:07:20 Next is a “Word event for George Brecht” on the words 'anti-personnel bombs', this is a kind of poem that can be done on any words. I did it first on these words at a reading in New York where the Russian poet Voznesensky joined some American poets in an anti-war reading. Unknown 00:07:42 [Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. Jackson Mac Low 00:07:43 Performs “Word event for George Brecht” accompanied by recording. Jackson Mac Low 00:21:12 All the people who are going to read the "Number to Symmetries" please come up for the microphone...These were a group of a hundred poems, of the form that has holes in it, that is the format of the poems are used to indicate silences, where there's white space on the page, they're silences. Some of the phonemes on the ends of words are prolonged, and others are stuttered. I'm not sure that any of them that are stuttered are in this particular batch. I wrote about 500 of these in late 1961, early--late, let's see, late ‘60 and early ‘61. I wish you'd say your own names, because I didn't get all your names down in the book, be sure to write your names in my book when you leave. Would the people participating just tell their names to the audience because I don't know all of them? Audience Participants 00:22:47 Peter Boxer, [unintelligible], Walter Katjetski, Robert Graham, Jenny Burn, [unintelligible], Ivan [Lourd (?)]. Jackson Mac Low 00:22:59 Remember when you get to the end of one, then the next person will take the mic. Audience Member 1 00:23:03 Do we circulate while we’re off mic? Jackson Mac Low 00:23:06 Yeah, if you want. Yeah, that would be very nice. Unknown 00:23:26 Ambient Sound [voices]. Jackson Mac Low 00:23:40 Yeah, just go after...Would you rather have these than the book? Would you rather have papers or the book? Probably easier for you to just put the book down and say “I’m here.”...No, I’m just going to do these. Alright, does anybody have a lot of short ones? I have a few more...So, you prolong those phonemes and [unintelligible] repeated this one...Yeah...Do you need any...Anybody have lots of short ones? Alright. [Unintelligible]. Okay, I would say move a little bit that way. Now those without mics, I think you might be picked up by the mics of those who have them to at least to get on the tape. Okay. Jackson Mac Low 00:25:23 Performs "Number to Symmetries" accompanied by audience members. Jackson Mac Low 00:41:01 In 1960, just before I wrote this group, I wrote a group of poems called the...Stanzas for Iris Lezak, they're--this is the summer of ‘60, they're presently being published this year by the Something Else Press , which is nominally in New York and really in Newhall , California , at the centre of the earthquake. I'll first read a short group, solo, and then read one in a duet with the--of the earlier performance of it. "Poe and Psychoanalysis". Jackson Mac Low 00:42:30 Reads "Poe and Psychoanalysis" from Stanzas for Iris Lezak. Jackson Mac Low 00:42:57 Reads "Marseille" from Stanzas for Iris Lezak. Jackson Mac Low 00:44:11 Reads "London" from Stanzas for Iris Lezak. Jackson Mac Low 00:44:48 Reads "Sydney" from Stanzas for Iris Lezak. Jackson Mac Low 00:44:58 Reads "Berlin" from Stanzas for Iris Lezak. Jackson Mac Low 00:45:12 Reads "Madrid" from Stanzas for Iris Lezak. Jackson Mac Low 00:45:21 Reads "Rome" from Stanzas for Iris Lezak. Unknown 00:45:59 [Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. Unknown 00:46:00 Ambient sound [music and voices]. Jackson Mac Low 00:47:37 I'll explain a bit, I took these from whatever I was reading from about April to October of 1960, the group of place-name poems were from scatter paper called The National Enquirer . This is from the, an article in the Scientific American ... Unknown 00:48:05 [Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed]. Jackson Mac Low 00:48:06 Reads [“Asymmetry from Scientific American” from Stanzas for Iris Lezak]. Audience 00:55:20 Applause. Jackson Mac Low 00:55:27 This is a, a number of these are collages of various times and places, as well as spontaneity in this room here, on two of these tapes, you will hear a lady's voice along with my own. I did a concert of my works along with Jim Tenney and Max Neuhaus , in town hall, New York in September of 1966, and still earlier Max Neuhaus had realized this particular piece which is a piece produced by subjecting the electric typewriter keyboard to randomization by random numbers, so it looks like a lot of different characters from the electric typewriter, Neuhaus recorded it at the University of Illinois laboratory, I guess some time earlier in ‘66 or maybe ‘65 and then put it down four octaves. He and another guy were reading from--the readers read from this in any way they wish, now I'll have the live readers to come up here...So then in... in this ‘66 concert, I did it as a duet, reading through the negatives from which this was printed, the blinking light, and a Jeanne Lee , a very fine blues singer was in the various works that were performed in that concert, and she's on the duet that you hear, that you will hear. A year ago, or a little more, I guess in April of last year I performed this in a class at NYU along with the-oh and the Neuhaus tape was along with that performance in NYU, then the town hall performance and the Neuhaus tape--all three were in the NYU performance along with the NYU performance, so now you'll hear it at least four different times, plus the present, something like that. Jackson Mac Low 00:58:23 Performs unnamed piece accompanied by recording. Jackson Mac Low 01:06:11 I'll do a piece called "Fifth Gatha'', which is another group piece, uh, the readers who learned it, please come up with copies, and I'll have to toss around tapes for a few minutes here. I might explain that this particular piece is one of a series I call "Gathas" that are written on graphed paper, they by chance operations. I take the mantra of one religion or another, this happens to be the great prajnaparamita mantra, which is basic to Northern Buddhism and Zen Buddhism, and it's arranged by the method so that it falls over an axis of 'a's, 'u's and 'm's that is the word 'aum', wherever a's, u's and m's appear in the mantra they may cross the mantra, there aren't many u's in this particular one, so there isn't any--nothing crossing the u-line, you may be able to see the empty gap there. The mantra in question is "Gone, gone to the other shore, quite gone over the other shore, boldly, wisdom, spaha, pray. Guthe, guthe, paraguthe [unintelligible]..." you may, those of you who know zen may be more familiar with it in its Japanese version, which is sort of a Japanization of the Sanskrit. The group version of it was done in the Chelsea Hotel , I think in '67, but the German editor and producer, Carl Weissner , the whisper version you hear, I did at home, earlier, maybe in ‘66, ‘65, ‘66. Jackson Mac Low 01:09:35 Performs "Fifth Gatha" accompanied by audience members and recording. Jackson Mac Low 01:26:20 The last poem I read was also from Stanzas for Iris Lezak. It's based on the Tibetan prayer to the gurus and it's translated by W.Y. Evans-Wentz . The next piece is all about bluebirds. It’s again--it uses the form of...In recent years I've gone back to writing poems in the form of the asymmetries that I wrote in ‘60 and ‘61, but these tended to cluster around one subject matter. There's one in the current Aspen Magazine about young turtles, no one really knows where they go once they've hatched, and they know when they come back, but they don't really know what they do in between hatching and there is a natural history magazine, there was a caption to a picture, and so there was a record in the current Aspen, that's of that group. This is the first one of this type that I did on bluebirds, was for a group event that a number of us, let’s see, Iris Lezak, Emmett Williams , Carol [Bouget (?)] and [Jet Yalka (?)] and I did a collective event for the University of Syracuse at Utica , which we called, which Emmett named for us ["Jack-a-Jurismatics (?)”] and so one of the pieces I wrote for that was this bluebirds piece. Emmett Williams has a beautiful work that has bluebirds in it, it's a permutation poem that also appears in this anthology, although this is an anthology that La Monte Young got together in ‘60 and we--‘60 and ‘61 I guess, and he had many difficulties between the time that it was designed and the time it was printed and finally got it out at first in 1963, it's called An Anthology of--well, various things--Chance Operations, and well I don't know what, concept art, anti-art, indeterminacy improvisation, meaningless work, natural disasters and so on. And well, just recently, our first edition is now a sort of a collector's item, sells around a hundred, but recently a German publisher re-published it for us and the current, the new editions is going for $8.50, so if anyone is--I don't have copies here but I'll be happy to send any to anybody. Contains work mostly, a lot of it is music, musical scores, there's some other poetry, including the Emmett Williams mention. The Emmett Williams poem does all the variations, does all the permutations of one group of things, "somewhere bluebirds are flying high in the sky, in the cellar even blackbirds are extinct", each of those is considered a run unit, and all the possible permutations of them are written out "somewhere bluebirds are flying high in the sky, in the cellar even blackbirds are extinct". I'd love to read it, but it's very long. Usually we read it with five different voices, each taking the unit and once in a while, people get through it without breaking down laughing. [Unintelligible]. This was taken from, the bluebird asymmetries were from two...were from two encyclopedia articles on bluebirds, one I think the Audubon Encyclopedia, and I've forgotten what the other one was. They're very complimentary. The voices you hear are, you heard in another performance of Leslie [Sixfin (?)], Amy [Spurling (?)] and Harvey [Lesain (?)], along with four of my students at the Mannes School of Music and about done in 1966, or 1967, I think it was May of 1967 that this was done. There's a specially gifted group I felt that I happened to get together in that class, just towards the end we were doing mostly, we were just doing ordinary grammar English, I'm an English teacher, for my bread. END 01:32:11 jackson_maclow_i006-11-031-2.mp3 [File 2 of 2] Unknown Speaker 00:00:00 This is the one you wanted some light percussive stuff? Jackson Mac Low 00:00:04 Yeah, but very easy on it, not very, you know, keep the amplitude down to, no higher than mezzo piano. Did someone take one from here? I'm supposed to have one and ten. Try to start with the earlier ones and then go into the later ones if possible. Those with the first, the earlier numbers should be on mic first. Those with numbers between two and five I guess you would have. So that the [unintelligible] will hear the earlier ones more than the later ones. You can prolong any of the phonemes at the ends of lines. This is another piece called [unintelligible]. Unknown 00:01:49 Ambient Sound [recorded performance plays; title uncertain]. Jackson Mac Low 00:03:00 Performs "Bluebird Asymmetries" accompanied by audience members and recording. Jackson Mac Low 00:12:35 I have one last one that none of these people have yet seen, and so this one has no rules, that is, the others have some rules for how you put in silences, these will, these...In the summer of ‘69 I did a project for the Los Angeles Museum of Art , an art technology show that's going to open this May. Unfortunately, my machine was bombed out, the corporation seems to be on the rocks, they're not providing the machine, but luckily I had poems that appeared on cathode ray tubes or something called a programmable film reader, and the words appear at the same time we sent the same impulses through an audio system and they turned out to be, well the oboe family, everything down from sopranino oboe to double, double, double bass oboe according to how long the lines were and so I did quite a few poems, this particular one is "The", and it's the last one I did, and tried to grab I guess three pages each, just use whatever discretion you want to, and listen, listen, listen. Earlier I had very strict rules governed by chance operations and so on, in reading these, well, in reading these kind of simultaneous works, and more and more I came to the, well I always had the principal of the most important things was to listen hard to everything that was happening, including whatever was happening in the room, whatever’s happening outside and so on, but more and more I relied on the readers to judge when to come in, and in--perform--these I found, this is one very long print-out of this particular poem. I don't want to--I think in, I don't remember, someplace there's a description of the idea of how they were made and all that, but what I got was a number of messages that, of which the units were permuted, the earliest form of my program was simply permuting the words in each, single words in each message. Later on I was able to get carriage returns and things like that so that in this, each message is a group of short sentences, usually about the same thing, and you'll, so that on the page each message looks like a sort of a stanza or strophe, and the groups of sentences--any number of the groups of sentences from any one of these strophe units may appear at any time according to way the thing is programmed. Does everybody have about three pages? Let's just make it... Jackson Mac Low 00:16:24 Performs "The" accompanied by audience members. Jackson Mac Low 00:27:57 Thank you. END 00:27:57 [Cut off abruptly].
Notes:
Jackson Mac Low reads from Stanzas for Iris Lezak (Something Else Press, 1971) and performs a number of pieces accompanied by recordings and audience participation.

NOTES

Type:
General
Note:
Year-Specific Information: Jackson Mac Low was in the process of writing “Odes for Iris”, written after the breakup of his first marriage. He won the American Academy of Arts and Sciences grant, and The Pronouns was republished in 1971. Mac Low was the editor of WIN Magazine and an instructor at New York University at the American Language Institute.
Type:
General
Note:
Local Connections: Mac Low’s direct connection to Sir George Williams University is unknown, however, Mac Low was an important American avant-garde poet, playwright and professor.
Type:
Cataloguer
Note:
Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones Additional research and edits by Ali Barillaro
Type:
Preservation
Note:
2 reel-to-reel tapes>3 CDs>2 digital files

RELATED WORKS

Citation:
“Jackson Mac Low: Ten-Page Biography with Detailed Log of Activites 1985-1999”. Jackson Mac Low. Anne Tardos, 2009.
URL:
http://www.jacksonmaclow.com/
Citation:
Mac Low, Jackson. Stanzas For Iris Lezak. New York: Something Else Press, 1971.
URL:
https://www.worldcat.org/title/stanzas-for-iris-lezak/oclc/795313792?referer=di&ht=edition
Citation:
Campbell, Bruce. "Jackson Mac Low." American Poets Since World War II: Sixth Series. Joseph Mark Conte (ed). Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 193. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998.
Citation:
"Jackson Mac Low." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2005.

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