The Daily Yomiuri reviews “loquacious” Jesse Glass’ The Passion of Phineas Gage & Selected Poems, a co-production of Ahadada & West House Books:

The Daily Yomiuri recently met up with Glass during his lunchtime in Shin Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture, near the campus of Meikai University, where he teaches literature and history. Asked about his early poetic endeavors, Glass, an avuncular, loquacious fellow with a ready chuckle, produced a battered scrapbook from his crammed shoulder bag. He opened the scrapbook and showed me a yellowed article cut from the Nov. 8, 1973, issue of the Carroll County Times, the local paper of Westminster, Md., where he grew up on a horse farm. The article profiles the 19-year-old Glass, who had just self-published a collection of poems and drawings titled Nigredo. The accompanying photo shows a handsome young chap–imagine a goateed Tobey Maguire–with a thousand-yard stare.

You may read the rest here.

[The following Ethnopoetics Update came in from www.ubu.com]:

“UbuWeb Ethnopoetics editor Jerome Rothenberg has supplied us with a fresh batch of poems and essays including: Yunte Huang’s essay with visuals of poems inscribed on walls by Chinese immigrants at Angel Island, San Francisco; Dennis Tedlock’s “A Conversation with Madness” (translation) from The Human Work, the Human Design: 2,000 Years of Mayan Literature; an essay by Greek artist Demosthenes Agrafiotis on traditional writing systems & art making (French); Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s concrete poetry translation of an Ojibwa poem “Song of the Owl“; Dinita Smith on “Incantations,” a handmade book of original writings in Tsotzil by a workshop/collective of Mayan women; Ambar Past’s Introduction to the Tzotzil Mayan “Incantations” book; and The People’s Poetry Language Initiative — A Declaration Of Poetic Rights And Values. Stay tuned for Ethnopoetic Sound updates including Ethel Waters’ ‘That Dada Strain’ (1922) and ‘The Signifying Monkey: Two Versions of a Toast.’”