Mac Low explains the compostion of these poems. ""Asymmetries" are nonstanzaic chance-generated poems of which the printed formats are notations for solo or group' performance. They are "asymmetrical" in that they have no regularly repeating stanzaic or other patterns. They are "notations" in that most aspects of their format can be translated into aspects of performance. Notably, the lengths of blank space before, between, & after single words or word strings, & between lines, stand for "temporal holes" -- durations in which readers keep silent or produce single prolonged tones on instruments that can sustain tones evenly (e.g., winds; bowed strings; reed, pipe, & electronic organs; & other electronic & mechanical sound producers). To measure these blanks, each poem page is conceived as a rectangle of which the horizontal sides are the top & bottom lines of words and the vertical sides are imaginary margin lines running parallelly thru the rightmost and leftmost characters on the page. "Blank lines" lie between the two margins; righthand blanks, between the right margin & the first character of an indented word; lefthand blanks, between the last printed character & the left margin. Similarly, "phonic holds" or "prolongations" &/or "repeats" are indicated in some Asymmetries by notations placed in what would otherwise be blank spaces. Phonemes are families of speech sounds of which the members are perceived as "equivalents" -- as having the same significance -- by native speakers of a particular language or dialect (e.g., English speakers perceive the Z's in lake, filler, & ball as equivalents -- all Z sounds -- tho they differ in various ways from each other). Formally defined, "a phoneme is a group of phone-types which are phonetically similar and either in complementary distribution or in free variation." -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.