An American poet, composer, visual artist, and performance artist. As a poet, he’s best known for his diastic poems, which rely on a formula of chance. The method involves a seed text which spells something out, such as “Call Me Ishmael,” and a source text, such as Moby-Dick. Although this process limits individual expression, with no “I” to be found, music is not missing from these poems and they are certainly not about nothing; there is an “I” lurking. Consider the second stanza of “Call Me Ishmael:” “Coffin about little little / Money especially / I shore, having money about especially little,” and the last stanza: “City a land. Land / Mouth; east, / Is spleen, hand mouth; an east, land.” I draw meaning—and narrative—from the repetition, and from what is missing. Jackson Mac Low said: “It often seems to me that the whole point of art is pleasure.” He studied ancient Greek, protested the Vietnam War, and has been described as “an elfin gentleman with dramatic eyebrows…pen in hand” (The Paris Review). His lifelong engagement with chance reflects his ties with the avant-garde, anarchism, and Buddhism. Brett Littman, once his student, writes, “At first glance, his poems are jarring and seemingly impossible to decipher…For me, Jackson’s poems were courageous, extreme, difficult, and revolutionary…” Let me be difficult, too.
“Call Me Jackson”
Case about little limits
Missing eyebrows
Jarring ancient chance, known shores of nothing
Consider a like land
Music especially
Just about coming keep spells on no
Chance at little lifelong
Money extreme
Jar a composer, keep stanzas ourselves not
Courageous American, lurking last
Made extreme
Just attention, case known, seed of never
-Morgan English