Gary takes apart some poetry blurbs of pseudo-academic appeal and discusses the most effective approach to marketing comic books to retailers. (Happy anniversary, Gary and Nada.)

The "X poet dignifies his poetic project with an irreverent but sly nod to discontinuous contingencies of value" genre of blurbs never appealed to me, as a real honest-to-goodness academic who hates jargon and pretentiousness with all my heart. Blurbs have a limited range anyway. They have to be hyperbolic. "A few of Jonathan Mayhew's poems are not half-bad" does not quite do it. They have to try to say something descriptive in 15 words or less, something which is very hard to do. Then there's the fact that the blurber's name counts for more than what the actual description says. "Blah, blah, blah... --John Ashbery" Insert generic Ashbery blurb here.