John Cage, an icon of the contemporary avant-garde, occupies an odd status in the music world. A seminal figure in the history of post-World War II music, Cage, who died in 1992, stood at the ...

Editors' Note: This essay is one of a group of essays on Race and the Poetic Avant-Garde. Read the rest. What is “avant-garde poetry”? is a question long on answers, if short on consensus. On the one ...