Alchemies of Theater: Plays, Scores, Writings

In addition to his work as visual artist, publisher, poet, and composer, Dick Higgins (1938-98) was also a genuine man of the theater. A founder of Fluxus, he was a major figure in artistic communities in downtown New York City, across Europe, and in Japan. Yet as important as Higgins's work has been to historians of the American avant-garde, relatively little attention has been paid to his radical theatrical vision.&nbsp; Alchemies of Theater brings together a broad selection of Higgins's writings and theater-related work, much of it unpublished or long out of print, including plays and performance scores, drawings, and writings on theater and performance. As this book demonstrates, Higgins deconstructed the drama long before it became a project of theater; undercut the traditional roles of author and director; created what is now considered "devised" theater; pioneered the use of media in theater, writing the first electronic opera; and was a precursor in deconstruction and &nbsp;"postdramatic" avant-garde traditions. His Intermedia manifesto offered a sweeping view of interdisciplinarity-in effect, a new arts ecology.

Arts & Photography

Higgins, Dick

History & Criticism

University of Michigan Press

Foew and Ombwhnw: A Grammar of the Mind and a Phenomenology of Love and a Science of the Arts As Seen by a Stalker of the Wild Mushroom

Small Pr Distribution

Written for the lay reader as well as for academic literary theorists, this book bridges the gulf between the artistic avant-garde in music, visual arts, and experimental literature and the general public. Higgins delves into multiple areas, but here is an example of one kind of poem he works with:
those pieces
 that move like this
those pieces
 i say
 are snowflakes
 i say
those pieces
 that move like this
those pieces
Along with many other artistsJohn Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jackson Mac Low come to mindDick Higgins has investigated and invented a variety of genres and forms, working especially in intermedia, the fusion of two or more discrete media. His poetics travel some distance from the poetry of the past. Here he uses the fusion of the receiver’s” and the artist’s horizons, their knowledge, feelings, experiences, and imaginings to provide a vivid account of artistic experimentation over the last thirty years.

Horizons: The Poetics and Theory of the Intermedia (Poetics of the New)

Southern Illinois University Press

Pattern poetry--poetry from before 1900 that fuses literature and visual art--has existed since the times of ancient Crete and Egypt. Less well known than modern visual poetry, pattern poetry has been produced in most European and American literatures, and, as close analogues, in many oriental literatures. This book tells the history of pattern poetry, documenting and classifying more than 2,000 works. Illustrations of each major genre of pattern poem are included. The book also explores related forms, such as graphic music notations, shaped prose, sound poetry, and poetic labyrinths, to name a few. A glossary, essays by two world authorities on the oriental analogues to the pattern poem, and the first full bibliography on pattern poetry complete the work. With this book, Dick Higgins has provided an indispensable tool for opening up the area of pattern poetry to the scholar and the lay reader alike, bringing order to what has been an obscure and confusing area, and delighting the eye and mind by casting light on these forgotten treasures.

Pattern Poetry: Guide to an Unknown Literature

Biographies & Memoirs

Leaders & Notable People

State Univ of New York Pr

Pattern poetry―poetry from before 1900 that fuses literature and visual art―has existed since the times of ancient Crete and Egypt. Less well known than modern visual poetry, pattern poetry has been produced in most European and American literatures, and, as close analogues, in many oriental literatures. This book tells the history of pattern poetry, documenting and classifying more than 2,000 works. Illustrations of each major genre of pattern poem are included. The book also explores related forms, such as graphic music notations, shaped prose, sound poetry, and poetic labyrinths, to name a few. A glossary, essays by two world authorities on the oriental analogues to the pattern poem, and the first full bibliography on pattern poetry complete the work. With this book, Dick Higgins has provided an indispensable tool for opening up the area of pattern poetry to the scholar and the lay reader alike, bringing order to what has been an obscure and confusing area, and delighting the eye and mind by casting light on these forgotten treasures.

State University of New York Press

One of 100 limited edition signed by Higgins on the first title page.

George Herbert's Pattern Poems: In Their Tradition

Unpublished Editions

Religion & Spirituality

Christian Books & Bibles

Writers Books

A dialectic of centuries: Notes towards a theory of the new arts

A dialectic of centuries: Notes towards a theory of the new arts

Printed Editions

This bilingual, revised, third edition of Dick Higgins' popular translation presents the complete Athenaum version of Frederich von Hardenburgh's classic romantic long poem, and the substantially different manuscript version of the first section. The German text is en face. The six hymns comprise a deeply affecting poem that speaks across the centuries with unquestioned radiance.

Hymns to the Night (English and German Edition)

Literature & Fiction

NOVALIS

Poetry

McPherson

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Books by Higgins, Dick