John Cage, Noise and the Spaces for Poetry

The sheet music for this notorious composition
is basically blank white space, but Cage
"composed" those empty sounds.

"Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating."

— American experimental composer John Cage 

(from The Future of Music: Credo) 

By the end of each week, the noise of our lives can often accumulate to an absolute din. The rushing about, the 9 to 5 schedule, appointments, traffic, news headlines, television, the endless emails, the shoulds. 


John Cage knew a thing or two about finding inspiration in the spaces and chances around him. Best known for a 3-movement noteless composition called 4'33"- which sounds almost exactly like 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence, Cage knew that even silence has fascinating messages to impart. 


In that "performed" composition, the silence is not just silence, it is silence about sound. It includes the noise of our lives, the sounds of which John Cage carved out for us to hear in a quieter place. 


Listen as you go about your days and weeks, and you'll find intriguing bits of poems all around you. This is how I end up with poems based on news stories, tutoring poems, persona poems.


When you pay attention to someone else, you're being given a new story to tell, another perspective. You get to step outside of yourself.


So, listen at a doctor's office, the subway stop, the dog park, the grocery store, or as you're walking through the neighborhood in the early morning. What you hear is so much more than noise. It's an opening, and could make a wonderful poem.