Esther Press

TO TOTO

Or, On The Space Given Over To Poetry In The Poetry Section At Barnes & Noble, In Chico, CA, From 2005 to 2009



The Poetry section remains in the same place as when I first entered the store in the summer of 2005. It is in the rear of the large store, and actually the bookcase directly in front of the bathroom area. Perhaps a space beneath the store would be less desirable, but this will suffice as the least desirable until the basement space is made. The Poetry area consists of six separate shelving units, abutted on the side and the back, with each unit containing five shelves apiece. 30 total shelves. The Poetry area, as I call/ed it, actually consists of shelves of Literary Criticism and Essays and even some Mythology. In 2005, there were six shelves of Literary Criticism and Literary Essays, about two shelves of Mythology, and 22 shelves of Poetry. Of these 22 shelves, five or six of them contained Anthologies and Best of collections, and Collections of Japanese Death Poetry, and so on.

Today, as I went to the section, forlorn as always, I noticed that the Poetry section had been banished from one of the two sides of the structure all together. The Poetry banner above the bookcase was no longer even facing one as one moved toward it. The lone Poetry banner would now only be seen full-on by someone exiting the restrooms. This would be the only chance of noticing it. In addition, from the high water mark of 22 shelves of Poetry in 2005, the section had now dwindled to just 15 shelves, and yet, still, four and one half of these shelves--almost an entire unit--was given over to the anthologies, Best Post-Partum Depression Poems, Best Comic Poems of Southern Illinois [okay, I'm joking here, but you get the picture], and so on. There were now 10 and half shelves given over to Poetry Facing The Restroom--where people, you know, relieve themselves of unneeded solids and liquids/let's be clear--and of these 10.5 shelves an enormous percentage was given over to Realistic Poetry, Poetry that can look a Person in his/her face and buy that person a cup of coffee with change in his/her threadbare pocket and sit down and talk about Reality, the kind that's made up daily, and run by a belief in the trade value of paper money. Not the paper money itself, but the BELIEF in the value of the paper money. So, it makes sense that this is the Poetry facing the depot of utter Reality, the Restroom, which is a beautifully antiseptic phrase. It’s the Shitroom, let’s be clear. It’s the Pissroom. It’s where the two-legged, now mostly hairless beasts squat in cold, 4100 kalvin, fluorescent lighting and relieve themselves of the wastes of digestion. After they clean themselves in—bear with me—the Washroom, the Lavoratory, etc—they can open up the door and see the wide store, and the remains, the waste of Poetry, looking back at them.

Poetry has always been one of the toughest of the holdouts of the obnoxious drum march of Capitalism’s Dream Reality of Paper Money and its Consequences. Poetry has always threatened to destroy the illusion of Money=Reality as the sole option of what is REALITY. But Money=Reality is a strong opponent. So strong, in fact, has the illusion of the Money=Reality version of Reality been that even Poetry’s own members are talking like Money=Reality narrativists and participating as handmaidens/handmaidmens to this fraud. The fraud is so ridiculous on so many levels that one can barely get one’s words out without pulling one’s hair and running around any local lake. Language is based on superstitions and unknown reasons and mishearings of things, and loan words, and words with sixteen different meanings, all in various combinations. Never mind the sheer lunacy of actually insisting on the Logic of Naming Something Something. This computer white screen is not white and not a screen even though we continue to believe it is. (“What’s he talking about?—it’s white.”) The absolute subtextual nonsense of it all, of the arrival of agreed-upon Meaning in Groups, to deliver a Reality of Money and its Diseases, and then to want to accept this nonsense, to Live in this Nonsense, to continue this Nonsense with Sober Faces, beat down by it’s insanity and inherent Deathheadedness, which is why neckties were invented, is the dumbest crime of all.

Poetry does not dignify itself by reifying the horrors of Capitalism’s tragedies by chaining itself to its modes of narration; it merely abets it, buffets it. Poetry must be Toto in The Wizard of Oz. It must pull back the curtain on Capitalism’s phony modes and see the nervous wreck, pulling the disconnected levers, for what it is: a brutal, insipid vision.

N/dfi and the Cost-to-Taste Time Ratio Benefit Analysis, and some Misinterpretation thrown in


Here are two sentences from a textbook from last semester:

"Karen Sparck Jones is the proponent of the idea of preparing indexes based on inverse document frequency (idf) : if the document frequency (dfi) is defined as the number of documents in a collection of N documents in which a term T occurs, then the inverse function of the document frequency of the term can be taken as an indication of the term value as a document discriminator. The inverse document frequency factor (idf) can be calculated as log N/dfi."

Chowdhury, G. G. (2004). Introduction to Modern Information Retrieval. New York, NY: Neal-Schuman Publishers.

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It is amazing how much money is spent for the sake of the taste of food, considering how short in length, physiologically, the mouth is with its taste receptors. If the entire throat was full of taste receptors, perhaps including the stomach, then--then!--certain foods may be worth the money.

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Here are three sentences from a textbook from this semester:

"Work relationships, authority structure, and status also impact the communication process by influencing people's expectations regarding who should communicate with whom, about what, and in what way. We have found that varying interpretations of relationships within an organization also cause communication failures. These are then magnified by the continuous flux of personal as well as professional relationships within the service; you cannot even count on consistent misinterpretation."

Evans, G. E., & Ward, P. L. (2007). Management Basics for Information Professionals, Second Edition. New York: Neal Schuman Publishers.

Large Pod, Kelly Howard

Kelly Howard Contemporary Glass

Kelly's an old friend who lives in Oregon.

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Satava Art Glass is in Chico, CA. They are famous for many things, but especially their jellyfish creations.

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Z Glass Act is in Oregon, and I've come to know about it through my work. She does wonderful light fixtures.

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Orient & Flume Art Glass is also in Chico, CA.

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My co-worker is also a glassblower, and she speaks of Seattle like it's Mecca. With Dale Chihuly standing in as one of the Gods.

Monika Rinck

Photo (2008) by Angela L (aka sopran) at Flickr.

For your interest:

Ulrich's Periodical Directory

"Ulrichsweb.com is the authoritative source of bibliographic and publisher information on more than 300,000 periodicals of all types — academic and scholarly journals, Open Access publications, peer-reviewed titles, popular magazines, newspapers, newsletters, and more from around the world."

--from Ulrich's website

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Library of Congress Authorities

"Using Library of Congress Authorities, you can browse and view authority headings for Subject, Name, Title and Name/Title combinations; and download authority records in MARC format for use in a local library system. This service is offered free of charge."

--from the Library of Congress website

Note: Knowing the controlled languages, the pre-set structure of the subject headings, will greatly increase the chances of retrieving relevant searches. (JW)

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Bibme

"The fully automatic bibliography maker that auto-fills. It's the easiest way to build a works cited page. And it's free."

--from the Bibme website

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Worldcat

"WorldCat connects you to the collections and services of more than 10,000 libraries worldwide."

--from the Worldcat website

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Project Gutenberg

"Project Gutenberg, abbreviated as PG, is a volunteer effort to digitize, archive and distribute cultural works, as founder Michael Hart said "To encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks."[2]. Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library.[3] Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books. The project tries to make these as free as possible, in long-lasting, open formats that can be used on almost any computer. As of February 2009, Project Gutenberg claimed over 27,000 items in its collection."

--from the wikipedia entry for Project Gutenberg

"Well It's True That We Love Another," The White Stripes (with Holly Golightly), Elephant, V2, 2003.

Just audio, but one of my favorites.

Reading more of the recent pieces. Misidentified 13 as 3 in the recording.

Due to load of schoolwork, I've been reduced to condensity:

Garden State, all by itself, explains why sentimentality is not an emotion but a tool of manipulation.

Emil Cioran would have been all about Twitter.

Cioran's themes remind me to ask out loud, How is it possible that Madoff hasn't killed himself yet?

German poets, via Burning Deck's Dichten, of particular note: Margret Kreidl, Monika Rinck.

Cannot imagine a scenario where I would knowingly attend AWP.

Flarf is somewhat like the old Romanticism but with furverts.

Jackson MacLow is a bridge to Flarf, by the way, in case anyone's listening.

My Reference course has analyzed human conversation to such an unbelievable degree, it is hardly possible to know if what I'm saying means anything.

The patron asked for information about Oranges and Peaches, but after some interaction with the Reference Librarian he realized that he was looking for On the Origins of Species, by Darwin.

BEWARE OF PITY, BEWARE OF REALITY




I spoke with a female friend today, and she disagreed with my thoughts at another blog, and told me why and the words "untenable" appeared, and "harsh," and "at".

I disagreed with her disagreement of my thoughts (now vaporized) at another blog, but I did agree my tone was off a bit, though I was incensed by the person's (another female's) sensibilities.

My friend said, "Why?"

I said, well, it relates to, in a way, a strange occurrence and my emotional confliction within this occurence, and how that has acted as a touchstone to understanding how I see Reality/"Reality" and, therefore, or besides which, why I became upset the other day on the other blog.

I mentioned to my friend that, years ago, I was standing in line at a canteen, waiting to buy something--a cup of coffee, a snack, I can't remember. The line was a bit long, maybe ten people. This was in a governmental building. In front of me was a young man, a twenty-year old perhaps, who seemed to have Down's Syndrome, though I am not qualified to say this. In any case, my heart sort of sank immediately, because I thought of his terrible plight, or what I imagine/project is terrible, and all the extra crap that he has to go through just to get through life. All of this is thought in the blink of eye, and then it's gone again, and back again, with new versions. Somewhere along the way, the young man begins to wave sort of violently in my face, and I have to admit to getting annoyed. So, here I am, in the double midst of feeling pretty badly for his predicament, but also legitimately annoyed that he's waving in my face. A third emotion enters in, of guilt, for feeling annoyed in the first place. I'm also hungover, and feeling the effects. So, here is the thing. Sadness, or what amounts to it, annoyance, and guilt. This is emotional confliction. I am not feeling one of these things--I feel them all, and it is difficult to negotiate. No easy answers. Or no answers at all.

This is the kind of emotional confliction and no easy answers that I admire in the work of Leslie Scalapino, Jackson MacLow, and several versions of Flarf poetry. There are dozens of other examples, of course: the early French surrealists, Vallejo's jarring temporal-spatial dislocations, and so on.

How this relates back to the other blog is that I felt the responder was making Reality much too simple, much more organized than I think that it is, and it felt, the explanation did, memorized. The depiction seemed to be a simple, rehearsed understanding, and not the truer, to me, more uneasily digestible conglomeration of information. Straightforward understandings do not sit well with me, because I feel like they are lies, convenient lies with which to build a bigger structure--like an essay, or an article, a rant, a life.

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Beware of Pity is the title of Stefan Zweig's book, and a summary of its contents arrives here via NYbooks.com:

The great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig was a master anatomist of the deceitful heart, and Beware of Pity, the only novel he published during his lifetime, uncovers the seed of selfishness within even the finest of feelings.

Hofmiller, an Austro-Hungarian cavalry officer stationed at the edge of the empire, is invited to a party at the home of a rich local landowner, a world away from the dreary routine of the barracks. The surroundings are glamorous, wine flows freely, and the exhilarated young Hofmiller asks his host’s lovely daughter for a dance, only to discover that sickness has left her painfully crippled. It is a minor blunder that will destroy his life, as pity and guilt gradually implicate him in a well-meaning but tragically wrongheaded plot to restore the unhappy invalid to health.

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I have always responded most fully to writers who say the inconvenient thing, who problematize emotions and reality, or their hold on us, like Zweig did and others do. I am sorry for being so intensely irritated with the woman at the other blog, and for others to have to experience that acute sense, but this is part of the reason why, and I felt the need to explain myself, which is not, of course, co-extensive with "the Truth."

"Angie," The Rolling Stones, Brussels, 1973.

Esther is taking a hard right turn, onto a new street.

In the above video clip, you will see the current poetry war being played out 45 years ago. It's like it was yesterday all over again. Flarf=Communism. Kent=Spam.

PLEASE READ


Among other things, I am a graduate student in information science, so much of what has transpired with the email issue isn't that far afield to me personally--it's germane to the field--but I do understand that it may make other's eyes glaze over. The following, though, is important, as it deals directly with why Kent's email ended up where it did.


Some reasons why spam filters designate incoming email as Spam:

- vulgar words
- phrases such as "100% FREE!" or "Click here to unsubscribe"
- bad grammar
- extra long sentences
- URL's embedded in the message
- suspect header information
- large fonts

The spam filter companies set up algorithms to catch spam this way. There are also levels of protection, of course.

Kent’s two messages to me from his Kent.Johnson@highland.edu account do not have any of the above issues, yet his emails still went to Spam. This is what they call a false match, normally.

Yahoo—my e-mail service provider and the one Kent sent his emails to—uses a spam filtering software called SpamGuard. In Yahoo’s Help area, it answers questions by users and keeps common questions in a hot link format, in a kind of Frequently Asked Question area. One of these FAQs is germane to the present issue of Kent’s email. It’s here:

How do you know which messages to send to my Spam folder?

Yahoo answers:

What we call "SpamGuard" is actually an ever-evolving algorithm we apply to all incoming mail. It's constantly learning what the Yahoo! Mail community thinks is spam each time you or any other user clicks the "Spam" button, and updates itself to detect those messages.

Two ways to help us prevent messages from being identified as spam are:
Clicking the "Not Spam" button after selecting a message that's not spam in your Spam folder.
Adding the sender to your Contacts folder (address book).

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What does the above mean, you may be asking? How does this relate to Kent Johnson’s email showing up in James Wagner’s Spam Box, when James Wagner has never received an email from Kent Johnson previous to this last week? It relates this way:

Enough Yahoo users—not James Wagner—have designated Kent Johnson’s highland.edu email address as unwanted enough that this email address—in Yahoo, mind you—is pre-set by SpamGuard’s algorithms to be sent automatically to the Spam Box. Let me repeat that: Enough people in the Yahoo email community—not James Wagner—have identified Kent’s highland.edu email as spam, as unwanted mail, and that has kicked Kent’s highland.edu email onto an algorithmically generated List—some call this a blacklist.

I can, of course, click on Kent’s message in the Spam Box and mark this email address as Not Spam, and I will then get Kent’s highland.edu emails in my Inbox. If I do not do this, the SpamGuard software will continue to kick Kent’s highland.edu address into my Spam box, and not just mine, everyone’s. Everyone, that is, using a Yahoo mail account, and who doesn't have Kent in their Address Book, or who hasn't marked the highland.edu address as NOT SPAM.

Kent’s gmail address—another of his emails—does go directly into my Inbox. This address has not been designated by enough Yahoo Mail users to be considered spam by SpamGuard.

Yet.

Now, perhaps, we can see the correlation between what those females said to me about not wanting to catch Kent’s attention and his highland.edu email address being designated unwanted enough by Yahoo Mail users that it gets pushed into Spam automatically.

Kent has rallied himself around the email issue, but the far greater charges of the posts have been left unchallenged.

The continuing tally of SPAMbot spam vs. Kent in my Spam Box:

201 spambot messages
2 Kent Johnson messages (but only ONE email address), so we'll use 1.

99.502% and growing

Kent's continues to be the only non-spambot email in the Spam Box.

ANSWER MY QUESTIONS, INFIDELS, AND I WILL GRANT YOU PASSAGE INTO THE FARM

The poets adopting the pose of Authenticity currently, and struggling mightily under the weight of that self-wrought illusion, and slashing in the brush at the Untrue Poetry, might want to check themselves in the mirror sometime and ask themselves, "Why have I asked myself to carry the weight of the True Poetry, the True Light? Why, oh, why, dear God, must it be me?"

SEND KLEENEX



I've had several backchannel discussions with people commenting on the Kent Johnson post, with each responder being in agreement with my take on Kent's endeavors and endeavoring, and one person even going further than I did. One female in particular didn't want to post in the comments section here at Esther for fear of Kent using her comments to further, as she said, his “attention-getting schemes.” “He's been doing this for years,” another female said, adding that she'd like to post a comment, noting her exasperation with him, but that she didn't want to catch his nastiness. Another respondent remarked:

“One telling thing in KJ’s response [at Silliman's site] was how often he said you’re free to say/think what you want about him/Yasusada. That was generous of him to extend you that freedom.”

To which I responded:

“Yeah, that allowance was so over-the-top I nearly said something. I was going to write something like, ‘Thank you for bestowing upon me the freedom to have my own opinion. May I have my lunch as well?’”

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Buffalo Poetics List upstart

Yasusada prankster

118 epigrammist inciter (268 pages of satirical invective of contemporary poets) (not that I care)

Kicked off of several websites because of personalized attacks

Feneon Collectivist (more snark)


See a pattern here? This is the guy with the balls to come crying at Silliman's site about "slurs" and "ad hominem" attacks? I mean, isn’t this like a Clown crying in a mirror? Have we completely now made Irony meaningless? Kent Johnson, the poor flower, the victim of "slurs" and "ad hominem" attacks! I mean, someone please send him some Kleenex.

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One additional side-note to the Silliman comment stream was the introduction of an entity, a ringer, a plant, a scab, called Murk Plectrum. Murk did the best acting job that he could muster, even diving fully into olden-day phrasings like "For shame." It's not an important point, but I'd like to know if anyone else has used that phrase in the last one hundred years in America. Anyway, what was so great about Murk was that he slipped up on his own ringerdom, telling the disinterested crowd at Silliman's site that he didn't know why someone—that someone would be me—could be so cruel to someone—that’d be Kent—they haven't met. This is where Murk made his fatal mistake as Kent's puppet. How would Murk know that I never met Kent Johnson? Unless, of course, Kent himself told him that I never met him, or Kent is Murk.

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More comedy: the absolute King of the Comments Fields, Kent Johnson, can't seem to post his objections to this site, yet he had been to this site four times in two days (twice on the morning that Silliman’s link debuted and twice the next day). He had used the exact link from Ron's site to get here each time. That link displays the POST A COMMENT button clearly at the bottom. A child could find it. Kent’s sudden onset of Comments Field Naiveté (see DSM-IV) was precious and amusing.

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The final bit is about the mystery of Kent sending me an email, supposedly, and my not receiving it. It is important to go into this mystery. This is the excuse Kent has used to explain his posting his supposed letter to me at Silliman's site, instead of here where, you know, the actual post is. I believe it’s simply that Ron’s website aids his self-promotional cause much better than this one, as Ron’s site has such an immense audience compared to little old Esther Press. In any case, Kent then cut-and-pasted what seemed like the form of an email transmission, with the very sturdy dates, email address and subject heading, all neatly in place. Kent then added that it never bounced back to him as further proof of it having been sent.

WHAT I KNOW:

1. I have never received an email from Kent Johnson, not just now, but ever. I have never emailed Kent Johnson, not just now, but ever. I didn't even know what Kent Johnson's email was until he posted that bit in Silliman's blog. So, with this news, we can effectively rule out pre-set JUNK/SPAM mail, because that would take me having received something from Kent in the past and my manually setting that email address as a junk email address. Because there was no previous email and no knowledge of his email address, and for the simple fact that I don't Junkify mail from real people, the pre-set JUNK/SPAM mail is not the case.

2. System-designated Spam. I have never had an email from someone who had a university .edu email address, like Kent's is, be sent directly to Junk mail. Not to my knowledge. I haven't had someone tell me, via a friend or an associate, that another person was trying to contact me and couldn't get through.

3. No email was ever received from Kent Johnson.

WHAT I DON'T KNOW:

1. If Kent is lying about sending the email. And simply doctored up some other email that he sent and then posted the frame with simply my email address in the requisite place.

2. If Kent did mistype my email address originally and sent it to wagnerjj@yahoo.com--two letter j's, not three--for instance, which is a valid email address, and only after looking at his sent email found that that was in fact the case, and then added the extra j when he appended the note in Silliman's comments field.

WHAT I KNOW WILL ELIMINATE MANY OF THESE VARIABLES:

Kent can just send “another” email to me, at wagnerjjj@yahoo.com, and I’ll see where it lands. If it goes to Inbox or Spam. This will shed plenty of light on the reality of the first “supposed” email.

And/Or:

Kent can simply do a PRINT SCREEN of his Sent Mail Box—the summary list of sent emails with the date range in question, not the individual, singular email. Save the Print Screen to a Word document and send it to me as an attachment. Then we'll be able to see if all is kosher, because with a person who has lied willfully in the past (see Kent Yasusada), it's the least anyone would expect.

Esther Press is pleased to announce that it is now a Kent-Friendly™ place, with an easier to access Comments Field, Kent's home away from home. Thank you to "the Paoli Kid" (see Pynchon) for the template aid.