Letter to Doug Holder from Poet Jesse Glass

Glass first began to write and publish experimental poetry in c. 1972. Starting in 1976, he edited and published the mimeographed Goethe\u2019s Notes Magazine and Goethe's Press from his family home in Westminster, Maryland.Richard Kostelanetz's wide-ranging cultural activities were a major influence during this period, particularly Kostelanetz's Assembling Magazine, the third volume of which Glass helped to assemble at the Maryland Writers' Council in 1976.

Glass became known for his writing and publishing in the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area, as part of a group that included Mel Raff's Aleph,Richard Peabody's Gargoyle Magazine, Elsberg/ Cairncross' Bogg, and Kevin Urick's White Ewe Press, as well as for his many underground publications in England. At this time Glass also made contact with the performance poet Rod Summers of VEC in the Netherlands and began to participate in mail art and in voice recordings and alternative music.

Glass attended the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in 1978, where he studied with Howard Nemerov. In 1979, Glass attended the Johns Hopkins UniversityWriting Seminars and obtained his M.A. in English. His teachers there were Richard Howard and Cynthia Macdonald. Fellow students included Michael A. Martone, Lucie Brock-Broido, and Louise Erdrich. In 1980, Glass moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to attend graduate school at the University of Wisconsin\u2013Milwaukee. While in Milwaukee, he edited the Cream City Review, and was constantly in touch with the readings and artistic events at Woodland Pattern Book Center. During this time, Glass began to correspond with Helen Adam, Kathleen Raine, Armand Schwerner, Rosmarie Waldrop, Ronald Johnson, Larry Eigner, Ron Silliman, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Steve McCaffrey, Robert Peters, Bern Porter, Lewis Turco, and others involved in new and experimental literature. Glass graduated with a Ph.D. in English, with an emphasis in American literature, in 1988.

In 1992 Glass moved to Japan and began to collect bilingual poetry publications, as well as to correspond with Cid Corman, Jon Silkin, Edith Shiffert, and other writers. Glass also was poetry editor of the Chiba-based poetry magazine the Abiko Rag, and suggested renaming it the Abiko Quarterly. He served as the poetry editor from 1993 \u2013 96. Glass became a member of the poetry group/magazine Sei-En (Blue Flame) founded by his friend the poet Yoichi Kawamura.

Glass went on-line in 1997, and joined the Buffalo Poetics List, Poetry, Etc., and British Poets, where he established himself as a presence and c