Shooter & Chutes & Sons is coming out with a gigantic anthology titled Generic Poems. This ambitious project aims to include 99% of poems published previously in the United States. The book is expected to cover an area the size of Texas (though most of the New England States - Rhode Island excepted - are bidding to have it "dumped" somewhere along their shared coastline, maintained afloat on the ocean surface by a string of wind turbines). Poems will be grouped randomly, as the editors have concluded that, according to Beckham Biggs, Generalissimo Editorissimo, "actually, most of these poems sound a lot like other poems. The echo effect is excruciatingly painful." (New England's strong suit is their argument that shoreline white noise will dramatically reduce the expected damage to acoustical membranes by close proximity to this echo. However, the fact that the book will be larger, perhaps much larger than the state of Texas, has forced Texas to file a plea for restraining order with the Soup Court of Texas.)

Despite these and other issues, the project is moving forward, according to unnameable sources. 7 million "pre-read" blurbs have been collected on CD-Rom from all the known poets of Boston, New York and Cleveland, Michigan. President Bush has weighed in, suggesting that "collecting all the. . . poems, or whatever. . . in one place will allow our forces to keep them penned up & out of harm's way." Howard Dean, in a rare moment of geometric congruence, agreed. "We're looking for votes from confederate flags and poets!" he said (to me, really, I'm not kidding).

Generic Poems is expected to change history. Whales will be used to imitate each poem, and whale-song cd's based on these recitals will be published in their tens of thousands. No one will want to listen to these, so it is widely expected they will be thrown to the sharks, in order to make them sharks violently ill.