Voyd of Course

"It's like the Onion, only skinnier!" --Milton Swift "Still worth the price of the paper it's not printed on." --Felicia DuBois "The unspeakable, spoken." --Malin Wuptke "More interesting than computer solitaire, though perhaps not so effective a distraction from the void." --Harlan J. Rippington "Satire today, history tomorrow." --Steven Wallace

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Location: Santa Fe, NM, United States

In 1966, I wrote a fake newspaper article under the headline "JACK CASS SETS WORLD SHOWERING RECORD." Mr. Yohans, my 9th grade English teacher, liked it so well that he read it aloud--to much not-quite-suppressed giggling, at the sound of which, Mr Yohans said, "What? What? Did I miss something here?" I spent the rest of the afternoon in Principal Leon Duff's outer office. When Mr. Duff, who was a busy man, decided he didn't have time to see me, his secretary sent me back to the classroom, where I was greeted like McMurphy returning from solitary. Emboldened by my de facto exoneration, my friends began work on their own fake news stories. I remember a spate of Russian names in the stories, including "Ivan Kutchikokoff" and "Ivan Jerkinov." Needless to say, our newly suspicious teacher sent both of my friends to Mr. Duff's office, where they were not as bureaucratically blessed as I had been. They sat detention for a week. This I took as a lesson in subtlety--and in how to start a commotion and slip from the room before the law comes down.

Saturday, January 14, 2006

From the Archives: June 15, 2003

POETS AGAINST THE WAR HAS COMPANY ON THE WEB

Reuters--Internet surfers who have been visiting poetsagainstthewar.org were surprised this week to discover a number of other war-related poetry sites on the web.

The first of these sites to appear was The Wall Street Journal's poetsforthewar.org. This was immediately followed by poetswhocouldntcarelessaboutthewar.org. Another popular site, the enigmatic poetswhomightbefororagainstthewarbuttheirverseistoo-
obscuretotell.org,
made its debut on Wednesday.

A number of specialty sites have also appeared. The Language Poets' site, poetswhothinksyntacticalconventionsarecausingthewar.org received four hits, all by Charles Bernstein, in its first week on the net. The New Formalists' site, rhymeandmeterforgodandcountry.org, proved to be much more popular, especially after the web master linked the site to the NRA's page. Poetswhoareagainstthewarbutwhoinsistonwritingwell.org remained "under construction" as of press time.

The most popular site of all during the last week of May turned out to be poetswhoarebusybuildingcareersbywritingthesameinnocuouspoemoverand-
overagain.edu.
The site was deluged by hits--mostly multiple hits by poets whose work appears on the site.

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