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 – 96. Glass became a member of the poetry group/magazine Sei-En 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 corresponded with many poets. Beginning in 1998, Glass established Ahadada Books, which has had, with the assistance of the Canadian poet Daniel Sendecki, some success with cooperative and e-publishing. In 2001, Glass was a featured performer at the international Poli-Poetry Festival in Maastricht, the Netherlands as a guest of the Dutch government.
Present endeavors
Glass’ own work includes The Passion of Phineas Gage and Selected Poems, reviewed extensively by David B. Axelrod in the archived magazine Poetrybay; and many chapbooks and artist's books, as well as visual and sound poetry. On another front, Glass is a folklorist and historian, focusing on Carroll County, Maryland. In 1982, Glass' compilation of folkloreGhosts and Legends of Carroll County, Maryland was published by the Carroll County Library System, and has since gone into six printings. In 1998, Ghosts and Legends was updated. In 2001, this book, along with the Carroll County ghost walk, hosted by the Carroll County Library System, was deemed a "Local Legacy" by the Library of Congress. Moreover, his research into the life and death of Joseph Shaw, a Civil War era editor who was murdered in Westminster, Maryland, has resulted in two books as well as a collaboration with the Lithuanian composerArturas Bumsteinas on a work of electronic music. Ghosts and Legends has become a standard work of Maryland Folklore, and is officially listed by the Maryland Humanities Council as such. In 2004, Glass, in collaboration with the Historical Society of Carroll County, Maryland and Meikai University, Japan, published The Witness; Slavery in Nineteenth-Century Carroll County, Maryland in a free, on-line edition, available as an e-book through Ahadada Books. This publication is the sole resource for the study of this subject. Jesse Glass' literary papers, as well as his collections of Marylandia, British and American underground publications, Japanese literature and folklore, and visual and sound works are archived at the University of Maryland Libraries Special Collections, College Park. Glass' work can also be found in the Special Collections of Brown University and New YorkUniversity at Buffalo, among others. The Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry also holds a number of Glass' visual compositions. The Tate Gallery, London, took two of Glass' illuminated books for their collection in 2006. Glass has recently begun to collaborate with the British poet Alan Halsey and the Germanexperimental composer and musicianRalph Lichtensteiger. Jesse Glass is also a "lexicoiner" ; in 2002, the term Spam Lit first appeared in a University at Buffalo Poetics listserv subject line, followed by this message: "I'm still thinking about the ramifications of literature and art created with the delete button in mind." Currently Jesse Glass is a professor of American literature at Meikai University in Chiba, Japan.