Table Of ContentJohn Cage
and Buddhist
Ecopoetics
New DirectioNs iN religioN aND literature
This series aims to showcase new work at the forefront of
religion and literature through short studies written by leading
and rising scholars in the field. Books will pursue a variety
of theoretical approaches as they engage with writing from
different religious and literary traditions. Collectively, the series
will offer a timely critical intervention to the interdisciplinary
crossover between religion and literature, speaking to wider
contemporary interests and mapping out new directions for
the field in the early twenty-first century.
Also AvAilAble From bloomsbury:
Blake. Wordsworth. Religion, Jonathan Roberts
Do the Gods Wear Capes?, Ben Saunders
England’s Secular Scripture, Jo Carruthers
Glyph and the Gramophone, Luke Ferretter
The Late Walter Benjamin, John Schad
The New Atheist Novel, Arthur Bradley and Andrew Tate
Victorian Parables, Susan E. Colón
Forthcoming:
Faithful Reading, Mark Knight and Emma Mason
Rewriting the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon Verse,
Samantha Zacher
John Cage
and Buddhist
Ecopoetics
Peter Jaeger
New Directions in Religion
and Literature
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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First published 2013
© Peter Jaeger, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
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No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on
or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication
can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-0466-3
PB: 978-1-4411-1752-6
ePDF: 978-1-6235-6234-2
ePub: 978-1-6235-6543-5
library of congress cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title is available from the Library of Congress.
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
In the land of perfect freedom there are no words
(The Lankav¯at¯ara Sutra)
vi
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
ThE ImITATIoN of NATuRE IN hER mANNER
of opERATIoN 7
NoT JusT sELf- BuT soCIAL REALIzATIoN 115
Endnotes 167
Works cited 173
Index 183
Acknowledgements
My gratitude goes to the Arts and Humanities Research Council
for funding research expeditions and time away from university
duties during the completion of this book. Thanks also goes to Laura
Kuhn at the John Cage Trust, Bard College, N.Y. and to the Getty
Institute in Los Angeles, for permission to access archival material.
Tim Atkins, derek beaulieu, Nancy Gillespie, Harry Gilonis, John
Havelda, Jeff Hilson, Jenna Kotch and Ruth Windle deserve thanks
for providing research leads and for helping to clarify my thought on
Cage and on some of the text’s theoretical background. Thanks also
to Charles Bernstein, Marjorie Perloff, Robert Hampson and Frank
Davey for their continuing interest in my research. John Gaynor,
Doug Landles, Michael Barbour, Zoketsu Norman Fisher and Bhadra
warrant special thanks for their advice and example pertaining to the
Dharma. This series’ editors Mark Knight and Emma Mason have
been wonderfully supportive through the various stages of this book’s
production. Their advice has been invaluable.
John Cage and Buddhist Ecopoetics has grown out of several talks
and short articles which have appeared in earlier forms and contexts.
Thanks to Jerzy Kutnik for arranging to have a short section translated
into Polish by the “Crossroads” Centre for Intercultural Creative
Initiatives and published in Cage 100 (2013), and to Emmanuelle
Waeckerle for publishing an excerpt in the Yorkshire Artspace and
University of the Creative Arts co-publication Booklive! (2013).
I would also like to thank the organizers and support staff of the many
conferences and public lectures where I have presented parts of this
book during the John Cage centennial year: David Ayers, organizer
of the Material Meanings Conference hosted by the European
Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies, University of Kent,
Canterbury, England; Desmond Biddulph and Louise Marchant of the
Art History and Culture Talks series at the Buddhist Society, London;
Nik Cesare and Matt Jones, organizers of the Future of Cage: Credo
100 conference, University of Toronto, Canada; Jerome Fletcher at
ackNowleDgeMeNts ix
Performance Writing 12, the Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, England; Nancy
Gillespie at the Kootenay School of Writing in Vancouver, Canada;
Robert Hampson at the Contemporary Innovative Poetry Research
Seminar, Royal Holloway College, University of London; Kevin Killian
for hosting a talk and reading based on this research at the California
College of Art in San Francisco; Jerzy Kutnik at the John Cage 100
Symposium held in Lublin, Poland; John Lo Breglio and Eoin Flannery
at the English and Modern Languages/Europe-Japan Research Centre,
Oxford Brookes University, Oxford; Michelle Naka Pierce of the Jack
Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics for inviting me to participate
in the fourthirtythree: Caged! event at Naropa University in Boulder,
Colorado; William Rowe and Stephen Mooney at the Poetry and
Revolution International Conference, held at the Contemporary
Poetics Research Centre, Birkbeck College, University of London;
Nicola Sim at the Whitechapel Gallery in London for organizing a
talk on Cage; Emmanuelle Waeckerle, organizer of the Book Live
Symposium at the London South Bank University.
Thanks also to the various publishers who have agreed to grant
permission to quote from their books. Quotations by John Cage
from Silence; A Year From Monday: New Lectures and Writings;
M: Writings ’67–’72; Empty Words: Writing ’73–’78; X: Writings ’79–’82;
Anarchy (Wesleyan University Press) © 1961; 1968; 1973; 1978;
1987; 1988, reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
Quotations by John Cage from “Overpopulation and Art” in John
Cage Composed in America (University of Chicago Press) © 1994,
reprinted by permission of the University of Chicago Press. Quotations
from John Cage’s personal correspondence held in the David Tudor
Papers at the Getty Insitute in Los Angeles, with permission of
the John Cage Trust. Quotations by Allen Ginsberg from Collected
Poems 1947–1997 (HarperCollins) © 2006, reprinted by permission
of HarperCollins Publisher. Quotations from Peace is Every Step: The
Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life by Thich Nhat Hanh, copyright ©
by Thich Nhat Hanh. Used by permission of Bantam Books, a division
of Random House, Inc’. Quotations by Leslie Scalapino from How
Phenomena Appear to Unfold (Potes and Poets, 1st edition) © 1989
and from New Time (Wesleyan University Press) © 1999, reprinted
with permission of the Estate of Leslie Scalapino. Quotations by Gary
Snyder from The Gary Snyder Reader: Prose, Poetry, and Translations
