When I was but a wee lad with no significant publications to my name I fell for one of the oldest tricks in the publishing industry. I know there are some aspiring authors who listen to the gibberish I spout at all times, so this might help someone not fall into the same trap that I did.
I'm not known for my poetry. Well, except for both volumes of Shit Poems. But for a brief period of my life, around high school and college, I tried my hand at writing serious poems. The reason I don't do that anymore is because, not to put too fine a point on it, they sucked donkeyballs.
So imagine my surprise when a poetry book--full length, not some zine or journal--wanted to publish a poem I'd won a minor award for during high school. I've hit the big time, baby!
Shockingly enough, the National Poetry Library is still around ripping off young poets who are wet behind the ears. The way it works is, you submit a poem for one of their contests. You don't win the contest, but they want to publish your poem anyway. No charge to you. However, if you want a copy of the book, it is extraordinarily expensive. $80 for one copy, if I remember correctly. I'm sure inflation has driven that up into the triple digits by now.
Everyone I talked to said this was a scam, and I ignored each and every one of them up to and including my creative writing professor at the time. Whoops! But I got the book and was surprised by how many poems were in it. Looking back, I'm not that surprised. You know what PT Barnum said about suckers, and one of them was definitely born on July 25, 1978 to Frank Bruni and Kathy Kopoulos at Elmhurst Memorial Hospital at around 2 am.
But I wasn't entirely stupid. Just, you know, mostly stupid. I decided to test everyone else's theory by writing the absolute worst poem I could possibly think of and sending it to their contest the next year. It was so fucking atrocious. I might have posted it a while back just so people could gasp in horror and say, "My word." But I'm high and don't feel like looking for it. It might not be there, anyway.
If they rejected me, I prepared to howl my vindication at all the naysayers. But you already know what happened. They accepted this piece of shit poem that doesn't even rate being included in a chapbook called Shit Poems. I was soooooo angry. Back then I really fucking hated being wrong.
So. Lesson learned. No harm but certainly some foul.
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