National Library of Poetry
Hee hee—poet Mike Allen submitted a "poem" titled "The Big Scam" to the National Library of Poetry. The NLP, of course, offered to publish it, and to sell him a copy of the anthology it would appear in for only $50. He declined to buy the antho, of course, but they published the poem on their website anyway. If you know anyone who isn't convinced that the NLP will publish anything, regardless of content, go to their main publications page and enter "Allen" and "Mike" into the search boxes, then click the link for "The Big Scam." (I tried to link directly to the appropriate URL, but can't get that to work for this item.)
The idea of submitting a poem that explicitly explains the scam was new to me, but it turns out there's a whole genre of joke poems submitted to publish-anything poetry publishers. In fact, there's even a contest for such, the Wergle Flomp Poetry Contest. The Wergle Flomp is named after British poet David Taub's pen name under which he submitted such ~masterpieces~ as "Flubblebop" to poetry.com. Taub also wrote the heartrendingly lovely (or perhaps I mean brainrendingly awful) Nicky Nacky Noo, under the name Stephen Abutlol. Both "Flubblebop" and "Nicky Nacky Noo" were, of course, selected as semifinalists in the poetry.com contest, and Taub was offered the chance to buy anthologies containing those works.
