Lecture on Nothingness: John Cage

In Cage’s poem the use of no words is the language he develops, which includes the silence of blank spaces, sentence gaps or fragmentation, and the flow or continuity of the entire piece, is as critical as the use and placement of actual words. Together, in balance with each other (not with words in a more exalted position than no words), they form what he wishes to say in a manner similar to a musical composition. And what he wishes to say is there is nothing to say - there is no one phrase of words that sums up the poem’s significance. Instead, reading Lecture on Nothing in its proper language or dialect is meant to approximate the experience of listening to a piece of music. The poem is written in a manner that allows it to be grasped, like music, in the moment of hearing and listening, not in an exercise of analysis afterwards. It is a reading of sheet music that becomes music as it is read.

The poem is set up in a rhythmic structure using measures, similar to music, and is to be read from left to right with rubato. This musical term, rubato, describes the art of a performer slowing down or speeding up the tempo of a piece in order to give it more depth and emotion and variability. In viewing the poem overall, as one piece, there are many blank spaces interjected within sentences or sets of words. In addition, punctuation is often separated from phrases and sentences so that periods, question marks, colons, semi-colons, etc., rest in their own measures, quite apart from both words and blank spaces. Due to the juxtaposition of words and no words (punctuation and blank spacing), the poem does not present a smooth, unbroken text from beginning to end, but rather a complex pattern of spaces, phrases, isolated words, and punc...

... middle of paper ...

...rked together, or how strings and brass and woodwinds worked together. That may be examined at a later time. But at the moment in which it is performed music is merely taken in by the listener and enjoyed. Cage is fighting to have his readers enjoy his poetry at the same level at which they enjoy his music or the music of others – not by discussion, but by adopting his new poetic language that permits them to interact with the poem in the very reading and listening of it, abstaining from and negating the necessity of any later experience to grant it significance or, indeed, legitimacy.

Works Cited

Works Cited

Cage, John. “Lecture on Nothing.” Poems for the Millenium. Eds. Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998. 413-415.