From Harper’s, we have the encouraging news that the impending poetry bailout will restore the confidence of readers.
Cultural leaders have come together to announce a massive poetry buyout: leveraged and unsecured poems, poetry derivatives, delinquent poems, and subprime poems will be removed from circulation in the biggest poetry bailout since the Victorian era. We believe the plan is a comprehensive approach to relieving the stresses on our literary institutions and markets.
Let there be no mistake: the fundamentals of our poetry are sound. The problem is not poetry but poems. The crisis has been precipitated by the escalation of poetry debt—poems that circulate in the market at an economic loss due to their difficulty, incompetence, or irrelevance.
I propose a category theory bailout next.
Thank you for this! I write poetry as a hobby, and this was one of the funniest things I’ve read in a long time.
subprime poetry? Could you be referring to rap music? Millions of teenagers love it — it can’t be THAT bad.
Here’s some more bailout humor – a really funny song about the Wall Street mess. Anything to lighten up a grim topic: http://evamoon.net/blog/2008/10/02/bailout-man/