My students and I went to hear Jackson Mac Low and Caroline Bergvall a
year or two ago at the McCormack Family Theater at Brown University.
I was as excited as hell: the reading happened to be at the same time
as our poetry class so the excursion was so totally legit and wild.
The McCormack Family Theater is a smallish venue.  My class was small
too, 8 I think, but we made a dent.  Mac Low was full of gusto and
brio and guff.  I was a bit tired so when like a hypnotist or a
magician he asked for volunteers from the audience I was up like a
shot.  So was Forrest Gander--and quite a few others.  Mac Low gave us
sheets of paper with words (and other stuff I think), as far as I
remember, and very little direction: I think we improvised from there,
interjecting, mumbling, declaiming together at will.  I enjoyed it and
it woke me up.  I came to see/hear Mac Low but Caroline Bergvall, for
me, was the galvanizer.  During her complex of readings, I gloated
over the rivetted dark heads of my students in the dark: I thought
they were stunned and I was delighted with myself for bringing them.
Afterwards they told me they were desperately trying to stay awake
(Rhode Island School of Design students are notoriously
sleep-deprived).  I think they were a bit appalled by Mac Low, with
his unexpected but sustained outbursts, mostly not in English.  That's
as I remember it.  I was sleep-deprived myself.
Mairead

Barrett Watten wrote to the Poetics List yesterday:

Anne Tardos has just written that Jackson Mac Low died this morning. It
seemed to me immediately that this was of great public consequence, and
personal sadness. This was her message:

Dear Friends,

We are sad to announce that Jackson Mac Low died this morning at 11:30 a.m.
at Cabrini hospital in New York from complications after a stroke he
suffered on November 4th. He was 82.

There will be no funeral, but he will be buried at Cedar Park Cemetery in
Oradell, NJ.

A memorial will be held in the future.

Anne Tardos
Mordecai-Mark Mac Low
Clarinda Mac Low




On Wed, 8 Dec 2004 22:00:20 -0500, cris cheek <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Very sad news just in from Anne Tardos via Pierre Joris:
>
> Jackson Mac Low died this morning at 11:30 a.m. at Cabrini hospital in
> New York from complications after a stroke he suffered on November 4th.
> He was 82.
>
>