Sorting Noises: Poetry, Libraries, and the Resistance of Information

This essay appears as a book chapter in "Poet-librarians in the Library of Babel: Innovative Meditations on Librarianship," edited by Shannon Tharp and Sommer Browning (Library Juice Press, 2018). The essay toys with conceptions of data, information, and knowledge as they might apply to poetry and to library work, with special attention to the writings of Aimé Césaire, Gregory Bateson, Jose Lezama Lima, and Lisa Robertson, among others. Citation: Lohmann, S. (2018). Sorting noises: Poetry, libraries, and the resistance of information. In S. Tharp & S. Browning, Poet-Librarians in the Library of Babel: Innovative Meditations on Librarianship. Library Juice Press.Librarians and poets are fatuous experts on everything. Both have had frequent recourse to information theories ranging from cybernetics to semiotics and from corporate parsimonies to hermetic correspondences. I wanted to start a movement, LIBRARIANS AGAINST INFORMATION, in solidarity with POETS AGAINST LITERATURE. Instead, I wrote this essay, borrowing a dilapidated conceit: Russell Ackoff’s so-called Wisdom Pyramid. Picture a triangle, laterally stratified, hierarchic and vaguely hieratic: from bottom to top, the steps are Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom. Imagine this as poetry. I tried, playing sorts with whatever came to hand, heaping questions, tweaking answers and scattering rubble.Lohmann, S. (2018). Sorting noises: Poetry, libraries, and the resistance of information. In S. Browning & S. Tharp (Eds.), Poet-Librarians in the Library of Babel: Innovative Meditation on Librarianship (pp. 89-102). Sacramento, CA: Library Juice Press