Anarchy

<P><B>Winner of the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) Book, Jacket, and Journal Show Best Scholarly Typography (2002)</B></P><P>&quote;That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.&quote; This quote from Henry David Thoreau's Essay on Civil Disobedience is one of thirty quotations from which John Cage created Anarchy, a book-length lecture comprising twenty mesostic poems. Composed with the aid of a computer program to simulate the coin toss of the I Ching, Anarchy draws on the writings of many serious anarchists including Emma Goldman, Peter Kropotkin, and Mario Malatesta, not so much making arguments for anarchism as &quote;brushing information against information,&quote; giving the very words new combinations that de-familiarize and re-energize them. Now widely available of the first time, Anarchy marks the culmination of Cage's work as a poet, composer and as a thinker about contemporary society.</P>