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This is the 75th
birthday Festschrift for Jackson Mac Low: poet, playwright, multimedia
performance artist, a founding participant in Fluxus, and composer of
music, performance works, and radio works. Contributions include essays,
poetry, graphics, photographs, an interview and sixty minutes of music
on a CD.
Contributors: David
Abel, Ammiel Alcalay, Joe Amato, Beth Anderson, Jane Augustine, Susan
Bee, Peter Behrendsen, Martine Bellen, Steve Benson, Carol Bergé,
Charles Bernstein, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, David Bromige, Sean Bronzell,
Lee Ann Brown, Warren Burt, John Byrum, Louis Cabri, David Cameron, Dave
Baptiste Chirot, Jack Collom, Robert Creeley, Jeff Derksen, Stacy Doris,
Michael Erlhoff, Dan Farrell, Irving Feldman, Allen Fisher, Henry Flynt,
Simone Forti, Allen Ginsberg, Loss Pequeño Glazier, Michael Gottlieb,
Tony Green, Barbara Guest, Sten Hanson, Bob Harrison, Bernard Heidsiek,
Michael Heller, Geoffrey Hendricks, Dick Higgins, Francoise Janicot, Gerhard
Jaschke, Milton Kessler, Alison Knowles, Jonathan Scott Lee, Andrew Levy,
iris lezak, Clarinda Mac Low, Mordecai-Mark Mac Low, Judith Malina, Chris
Mann, Peter Manson, Friederike Mayrocker, Raphael Mostel, Susan Smith
Nash, Gale Nelson, Morgan O'Hara, Jena Osman, Gil Ott, Rochelle Owens,
Ron Padgett, Nick Piombino, Stephen Ratcliffe, Joan Retallack, Janet Rodney,
Jim Rosenberg, Jerome Rothenberg, Douglas Rothschild, Armand Schwerner,
Spencer Selby, Rod Smith, Ellsworth Snyder, Anne Tardos, Tibor Tardos,
Nathaniel Tarn, Henry Taylor, Richard Tuttle, Anne Waldman, Keith Waldrop,
Rosmarie Waldrop, Chet Wiener, Geoffrey Young, Karl Young, Magdalena Zurawski,
Nicholas Zurbrugg
On the CD: Eric Andersen, David Behrman, Jeremy Bernstein, Andrew Bolotowsky,
Warren Burt, cris cheek, Andrew Culver, Alvin Curran, Moniek Darge, Roger
Dean, Kenny Goldsmith, Malcolm Goldstein, Daniel Goode, Gerry Hemingway,
Andrew Levy, Jackson Mac Low, Ikue Mori, Charlie Morrow, Gordon Mumma,
Godfried-Willem Raes, Hazel Smith, the Splatter Trio, Jim Staley, Anne
Tardos, Tui St. George Tucker, Davey Williams
From the introduction
to Crayon 1 by Andrew Levy:
Buddhist meditation locates the formlessness behind the forms, the non-cognitive
unintentional intuitive unconscious, which becomes for the meditator the
eye we do not see, the ear we do not hear, the flow of feeling in which
everything appears. Meditation helps individuals to see what is going
on before their eyes and to become creators of themselves in the great
work of creation. Though it is not my intention to write an introduction
on the influence of Buddhism on the work of Jackson Mac Low, I do want
to suggest that the relation between his knowledge and practice of Buddhism
and his masterful deployment of both nonintentional and intuitive or spontaneous
methods of composition (a brilliantly various body of poetic methods several
other contributors to this volume speak quite eloquently on) enables us
to understand that all notions of self and civilization are culturally
induced ways of keeping life at a distance, impersonal, remote, abstract,
without feeling. In other words, an alchemist of linguistic matter, Mac
Low’s art shines a light by which ordinarily diffused states or conditions
of life are brought into sharpened focus and infused with energy sufficient
to liberate men and women from the largely mechanical, socially coerced,
habit-ridden fragmentation of life. In its capacity to act through the
abstraction, and so become increasingly immediately infused with its environment,
Mac Low’s works recover what has been delegitimated in Western culture
since Plato – an Immediate knowledge, against the One that subsumed the
apparent temporal discontinuities, the contingencies, the differences.
Inside this first issue of Crayon, the reader will find poetry, personal
reminiscences and tributes, essays, photos and other graphic art, an interview
addressing, among other questions, Mac Low’s role and participation in
Fluxus, and the festchrift CD – all testament to the artist’s commitment
to his art and his multi-various community of fellow artists and friends.
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