KENT JOHNSON POETIC ECONOMIES OF SCALE: ON JACKET2
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Jeff Nagy Associate Editor Claudius Apps Dear Jeff, A couple weeks ago, I sent you an email of regret, communicating I was stumped on how to write a negative review of Matthew Zapruder’s latest book. In that email, I mentioned I would write, instead, an extended commentary on the phenomenon of Jacket2, given that PENNSound’s buyout and product-line retooling of John Tranter’s venerable journal seemed an “event” worth noting. Too, I thought I’d be a good choice to write such a thing in light of fact, odd as the fact might be, that I stand as the most published author in the original Jacket over its forty-issue history. Not that I counted carefully, but it doesn’t appear I have a close competitor. I’m still optimistic, given my history with the original, that I will soon be solicited by the new owners. (Wassup, Charles? Drop me a line!) Now, with heartfelt apologies, I am writing you again, to tell you that I’ve been stymied once more. I just can’t quite see how to do it, because what I wanted so eagerly to say seems, now that I’ve written it down, so obvious as to barely need assertion. And dammit, I’d spent a lot of time on it. For example, I’d had in mind to write, using advanced micro and macro-economic analysis, supported by graphs and charts, concerning how J2, in context of the avant po-biz economy, is to be seen as a massive acquisition that moves the Bernstein Group into the territory (sub-culturally speaking) of quasi-monopolistic status: Tranter’s independent, multifarious, often cantankerous, unruly, sometimes satirical upstart bought up and aesthetically downsized (rationalized) as tame and proper subsidiary vertically integrated into the Academic Post-Avant Consortium (APAC). I mean (OK, I’ll go ahead and provide the synopsis anyway), I was going to write that the reincarnation of Jacket was already showing itself to be an in-your-face business plan structured to deepen market position and share for old-guard Late-stage Langpo figures, and (simultaneously) to aggressively merchandise the (largely) secondary work of younger post-Langpo managers and outsourced operators, whose fuller integration is a means of securing future Poetry Field supply and retail outlets for the Bernstein Group, expanding, in obvious ways, its Poetic Economy of Scale (PES). Advantages of sources of Poetic Economies of Scale are well-known, and they probably don’t need repeating for most poets in the post-avant field, who intuit the matter instinctively. But for what it’s worth, I was going to break the advantages down somewhat like this: 1) Purchasing (bulk buying of materials through long-term contracts) 2) Managerial (increasing the specialization of managers) 3) Cultural-Financial (obtaining lower-interest charges when borrowing from institutions and securing access to a greater range of Lit-Crit instruments) 4) Marketing (spreading the cost of advertising over a greater range of output in media markets) 5) Technological (taking advantage of returns to scale in the production function, especially since the return on listserves and blogs has proven uneven). Each of these five factors reduces the long-run average costs (LRAC) of production by reducing the short-run average total cost (SRATC), obviously. And you know, I had exhaustive notes for elaborating on each of these five components as they relate to the poetic economy.(Dear Jeff, on the off-chance you’d still want to include this as a “Letter to the Editor,” where the solicited contributor writes in to mark his failure, could you put just this one illustrative graph in for me, right beneath this paragraph? My mouse thing doesn’t work with pictures. Thanks!) Needless to say (again, all of this is embarrassingly evident, as you can see), the Group, in all its various holdings, has no publicly traded stock. Insider trading of options in our Field--notably those involving “unofficial” poetic hedges and derivatives--works most efficiently in context of “close,” unquoted, or unlisted environments. So I was going to talk about that, too. And I was planning to add, so that the piece didn’t come off as overly agonistic, that there will be, of course, good and useful things offered through the new, properly rationalized product line. No one can deny that. Who could argue with IKEA, for instance, to mention just one interior-decoration close company in the larger sphere? Why bother with an IPO when the brand guarantees stable position and share? Plus, when the CEO is the Donald T. Regan (Contra-Affair insider and Reagan Administration Treasury boss) Chair of Poetry of the Ivy League, capital just sort of, like, flows... (Those somewhat disconnected sentences from my stillborn notes…) Anyway, Jeff, I’m going on too long. I wish I could have done better. Also, while I’m thinking about it, though I guess I already said it, on the far chance you’d want to publish this as a letter to the magazine, or something marginal like that: I can’t figure out how to use the picture making function to display the graphs and charts that prove my points. Therefore, if you’d still want to run this as a weird kind of apology (and I’ll live with the shame of it), is there any way you could put at least one of my graphs in for me? As I said, when I drag my mouse thing over the graph pictures, the confounded computer machine won’t let me copy. Dammit! Sorry to be such an annoying geezer. And I realize this yet second regret to you will probably seal my fate insofar as getting into Claudius Apps is concerned, a magazine whose completely bizarre mission statement is very much after my heart. I do wish I could be part of it in the future, but I will understand if this does try the patience of you and the other editors, once and for all. I do wish your journal all future success. Careful that it doesn’t become too successful, or the Late-Langpo Academic Peter Bürger Was Right But Who Cares Corporation (LLAPBWRBWCC), the real parent company of it all, will be trying to buy you up, too. I’m going fishing for a week up in Wisconsin, but I’ll be back, I think, after that. As the great Robert Traver once memorably said, “Fly fishing may not be the most important thing in life. But I doubt there is anything that is more important.” Please write me back! Long Live the Libertarian Socialist Movement of Egypt. http://anarkismo.net/article/19666 Kent Post Scriptum: Dear Jeff, just to let you know, I had run a draft of this by the one person in the poetry world I still have a correspondence with. Here is what she said, which made me feel pretty good, and maybe it might make a difference in your decision on publishing my piece, which again, I do hope you will, even if just as an email to the Editor:   I think the analysis of BG’s (she means the Bernstein Group) acquisition is exactly right--Penn Industries receives the academic equivalent of gov’t funding, as well as, I imagine, plenty of actual gov’t funding, so that snapping up an undercapitalized but ferally innovative Jacket at a bargain‑basement rate was something like Wells Fargo using TARP funds to buy Wachovia. The analogy isn’t exact, if only because, as you indicate, it doesn’t go far enough: I’m not sure there’s a bank as (sub‑culturally) monopolistic, as horizontally and vertically integrated, to compare it to--really a rather shocking concentration of institutional power in very few hands, as even the small staffs of these supposedly individual organs completely overlap (PennSound, Jacket2, Kelly Writers House, etc.). It may be now too big to fail, or foil, but I certainly think it’s immensely valuable to point it out, and no one, until now, has done so. Tranter’s “peer review” (”as in, I peer at it, and if it looks interesting, I publish it”) is something I already miss--the new Jacket feels, especially in the reviews, almost hysterically groomed, like the university quadrangle it in fact is.http://www.anarkismo.net/article/19666shapeimage_3_link_0
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