Werbiwokowizualny performance? O otwieraniu Cage’a według Edwina Morgana

Abstract

The paper will attempt an analysis of Edwin Morgan’s concrete poem Opening the Cage: 14 Variations on 14 Words as an example of the intermedial text. By writing through John Cage’s conceptual poetry, Morgan constructs a “verbivocovisual” poem that works both on a visual plane and in verbal performance. It is this fusion and interaction of different medial processes and procedures that makes Opening the Cage: 14 Variations on 14 Words so challenging from the cognitive point of view. The paper will address: a) the way the constructivist scheme produces its own meanings, but also brings out the material aspect of the word, its plasticity; b) the incessant game of (r)(d)econstruction of meaning; c) the poem’s exploration of the half-way house between concrete and linear poetry, the so-called Morgan’s „third language”.