Cleaving mac low

Against Ego

“At first one thinks

one can avoid the ego,

make works that are

egoless, by chance…”

—Jackson Mac Low

Just when I naively thought that

MAking things “chance” really worked—

TaCky realizations started bugging me about

WorKing spontaneously with these diastic

PoemS ending up even more Egoic and

EmotiOnal than before since my so-called

SpontaNeous “virgin” Intuition was actually

EnvironMentally already polluted by my usual

ExtravagAanza of “autobiographical” illusions—

Seriously Complicating the various and

Sundry SimuLtaneities I had so cleverly

Somewhat otiOsely composed, but even

So what in the World was still coming thru?

Seed text = Jackson Mac Low

Source text = “The Poetics Of Chance and the and the Politics of Simultaneous Spontaneity”

“At first one thinks one can avoid the ego, make works that are egoless, by chance. This illusion passes after you work this way a while. You realize that making a chance system is as egoic, in some ways, or even as emotional, as writing a poem spontaneously. Bent at the same time, you realize that there is something more than just yourself doing it. And by interacting in that way with chance or the world or the environment or other people, one sees and produces possibilities that one’s habitual associations—what we usually drawn on in the course of spontaneous or intuitive composition—would have precluded, for our so-called intuition or taste is always involved with our biographies and habits…” —Jackson Mac Low, “The Poetics Of Chance and the Politics of Simultaneous Spontaneity,” Talking Poetics from Naropa Institute, Boulder: Shambhala, 1978.