Sturgeon's Law

National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia and Poetry Foundation President John Barr today announced a joint $100 million effort to stamp out any potential advance exposure of poems accepted by literary journals. They have named the project Poets Against Previous Publication (PAPP).

The PAPP initiative will be headed by Steven D. Schroeder, who holds the new position of First Serial Rights Czar. A panel of advisors, including the editors of such noted print and online magazines as Poemightier, The Dugong Review Quarterly, and Living in a Cave, will assist him, supplemented by battle-tested veterans of the wars on terror, drugs, and file sharing.

The editors involved in PAPP agree that the value of their journals would be harmed by a poem having appeared in front of a dozen or more people, some of whom might then seek out the journal upon hearing the poem was published there. There are also unconfirmed reports of thousands of angry subscribers demanding their money back because they had seen a good poem before.

"Writers may claim they're only posting a draft in a workshop where the poems aren't searchable and quickly vanish, but in reality those are gateway publications," Schroeder says. "Also, poetry bloggers are demented gnomes who want to devour your children. I just felt like pointing that out."

Schroeder will dispatch hundreds of mercenaries to monitor every poetry blog, online workshop, and personal website worldwide for poems, then track the submission and acceptance of said poems. The work qualifies for hazard pay due to the high potential for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. So far, few people have signed up for the Poem Police, but recruiting numbers are expected to increase along with their authority to enact brutal vigilante-style justice on offenders.

"Unless we carefully control the flow of information, a reader could conceivably find out what poems were in a journal, then contact the poet and just ask to read the poems. I'd sooner punch a puppy in the face than allow that," Schroeder says as he punches a cute puppy in the face.

One of the most ambitious programs PAPP plans to implement is the effort to ensure that no poem is read in public prior to its publication in a magazine. A recent survey by Editors Semiweekly listed reading "new work" at an open mic night as the second most popular form of previous publication fitting PAPP's expanded definition, behind only crumpling up a copy of a draft and putting it in a garbage bin to which other people might have access.

"In the future, I hope to further refine the guidelines so a poem is previously published if anyone other than the writer has ever seen or thought about it," Schroeder says. "That would include when the editor opens the envelope or e-mail and reads it. Tough shit."

Reb Livingston has been placed at the top of PAPP's Most Wanted List. She is considered self-promoting and dangerous, and may be carrying poems objectively valued at $313.58. PAPP advises you not to read her journal or blog.