Nikolaus Einhorn is a young German writer who has already produced a good number of sound poems. He is trying to realize a non-abstract oral poetry free from all written notation, a construction which comes directly from the mind and memory. "Do you may be, the essential interview", composed in 1975 represents a hypothetical interview with the U.S. musician John Cage, the representative of non-music, that is, of that school which, by rejecting the forms and structures of composition, has brought about a crisis in traditional and contemporary musical composition, and which, using different techniques principally of the aleatory type, affirms the validity of musical silence, also on ontological grounds. In our opinion this "essential interview" establishes a series of tautological circularities, underlined by the repetition of Cage's "smile / little laugh".

Nikolaus Einhorn was born at Dresden in 1940. He studied German and English in Munich and earns his living as a teacher at the Dusseldorf high-school. In 1970 he founded the S Press Tape Series" (cassettes) dedicated to acoustical literature (sound poetry), which today is one of the most important means of diffusion of experimental poetry. He has published numerous essays on the avant-garde of the twentieth century and a volume of essays on the literary work of Kurt Schwitters, published by the magazine "Text + Kritik". Me has also produced radio programs on such authors as Otto Nebel, Raoul Hausmann, Henri Chopin, and on the poetry of the North American Indians. At present he is translating Indian poems and producing a radio program in German on "The Night Chant", an extraordinary Navaho healing ceremony.