Scholarly discussion of the music of John Cage.

[Rod Stasick <>]

On apr 13, 2556 BE, at 13:48, Joseph Zitt wrote:

This brings up an interesting meta-question of how far a form can be stretched before what is produced no longer fits the name. I would think that writing a mesostic would be aking to writing a sonnet or a fugue, in that there is the strictest form, then some leeway, then a grey area, then things that are clearly not of that form. There's nothing wrong with creating new forms, of course. As I understand it, when what Cage intended as an acrostic wasn't really one, it got the new label of mesostic. Similarly, if something strays enough from being a mesostic not to clearly be one, there's no shame in defining what was done as a new form.

I agree with Joseph on this.

Cage did this with the autoku

and I've written some "mesostikus"

(5-7-5 mesostics) and "mesostingas"

(renga mesostics) that don't bend rules,

but rather extend the possibilities of the 

form that you're working in. When you get 

to a large number of writing forms (such as 

what you get in OuLiPo), the overlap of styles 

becomes apparent which could cause some types 

of confusion, but generally those kinds of  texts are 

texturally weighted in a certain fashion to become set

stylistically. Maybe it is just the passing of time and the

continued use of a style that eventually sets it into stone.

?

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