I was never a fan of poetry so I can’t imagine soliciting the amateur efforts of scribes across the continental United States and Canada. Somebody at the mail drop was going to have to read these submissions whether they were typewritten or scrawled by hand in pencil, ink or crayon. This person or persons would have had to weather a stormy sea of misspellings and all sorts of grammatical tragedies all in search of a ditty. Obviously, there had to be a catch, but there has to be an easier way to make money. It sounds like a position for a masochist or a job assigned by a fairly sadistic boss. I imagine they would go through a temp agency because who would sign up for something like this?
My guess is that a large portion of the mail they received was follow ups – geniuses-in-waiting writing to confirm receipt of their epic poem. It all sounds like an open invitation to stalkers.
In this week’s edition of 
