New Poet Laureate Vows Revenge on College Poetry "Snobs"

FAIRFAX, California.  Kay Ryan, the newly-annointed poet laureate of the United States, vowed today to use the enormous powers of her office to strike back at the "snobs" who kept her out of the Poetry Club at the University of California, Los Angeles, and others like them.

Ryan:  "I got your villanelle right here, buster."

"The pain that I suffered when someone scribbled 'Not up to our standards' in the margin of the sonnet I submitted left a scar that cannot be removed by plastic surgery," said Ryan.  "As a result, I intend to get back at the self-important twits who run college poetry clubs through over-zealous enforcement of federal law."

College poetry club officers:  "We control the $120 budget!"

Under a little-used federal law, the Poetry and Physical Fitness Act of 1982, the poet laureate has the power to impose physical fitness tests on officers of poetry clubs at colleges and universities that receive federal aid.  "In Europe, there's a concept of desuetude, where a judge won't punish people with a law that's never been enforced," says professor of international law David Philbin of the Roman Hruska School of Law and Diplomacy in Kearney, Nebraska.  "Unfortunately for American college poetry club presidents, they don't live in Europe."

"Say Uncle", by Kay Ryan

Ryan is the author of "Say Uncle", a collection of poems that deals with love, loss and high school wrestling, and she is said to be considering a no-holds-barred review of college poetry club "cliques" that would include a swimming test, an obstacle course and Greco-Roman wrestling.  "To use a 'conceit', which is an extended metaphor," she said from her front porch to sports reporters and book reviewers at a hastily-assembled press conference, "Their ass is grass and I'm a lawn mower."