A beautiful book, both in terms of writing and as an art object. It includes a volume that reproduces Cage's 1972 portfolio, Mushroom Book, authored in collaboration with illustrator Lois Long and botanist Alexander H. Smith.

Cage on his composition course:

"I wasn't concerned with a teaching situation that involved a body of material to be transmitted by me to them. I would, when it was necessary, give them a survey of earlier works, by me and by others, in terms of composition, but mostly I emphasized what I was doing at that time and would show them what I was doing and why I was interested in it. Then I warned them that if they didn't want to change their ways of doing things, they ought to leave the class, that it would be my function, if I had any, to stimulate them to change."

Regarding his poems on mushrooms:

"My poems on mushrooms are nonsense in the sense of not being ordinary sense," Cage observed of his mesostic poems; pleasantly counterposing Wittgenstein's rationalism. "Words which you're used to going in one direction can go in at least two directions. They can be used to set your mind floating."