Horizons: The Poetics and Theory of Intermedia

Author: Dick Higgins

Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press (1983)

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 artists—John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rau­schenberg, and Jackson Mac Low come to mind—Dick 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.