title: Empty Words
text: # Empty Words
  
  Empty Words: Writings '73–'78 is a book by American avant-garde composer John Cage (1912–1992), first published in 1979 by Wesleyan University Press.
  
  ## Contents
  
  * "Foreword" (1978)
  * "Preface to Lecture on the Weather" (1979)
  * "How the Piano Came to be Prepared" (1973)
  * "Empty Words" (1974–75)
  * "Where Are We Eating? and What Are We Eating? (38 Variations on a Theme by Alison Knowles)" (1975)
  * "Series re Morris Graves" (1974)
  * "Sixty-One Mesostics Re and Not Re Norman O. Brown" (1979)
  * "Writing for the Second Time through Finnegans Wake" (1978)
  * "The Future of Music" (1974)
  
  Also included are the following mesostics:
  
  * "Many Happy Returns" (1979)
  * "A Long Letter" (1977)
  * "Song" (1979)
  * "For S. Fort, Dancer" (1979)
  * "For William Mc N. Who studied with Ezra Pound" (1979)
  * "Wright's Oberlin House Restored by E. Johnson" (1979)
  * "'I'm the happiest person I know' (S.W.)" (1975)
  