Gems of the Web: Spam Poetry

The non-canned version of spam comes to us not only to raise awareness about solving all life's problems by entrusting your credit card information to a certain Chinese manufacturing company that will not only be delighted to have your trust in doing fair business of buying impeccably forged products of superb toxic quality with them but also remedy you of any positive account balance and hopefully max out your credit limit.

No, spam also comes to us to enlighten us, make us reflect upon our own selves (with reflection on selves of others being a bonus) and enjoy the pure creative genius of their authors.

Spam makes us marvel at beauty of randomness or guess which new creative writing techniques could have produced such incredible inspiring verses in quantities vast beyond imagining.

I cannot claim it as my favorite pastime but reading spam poetry indeed can be as rewarding as reading high poetry of acclaimed authors who had literary means to transform their suffering from depression and other mental disorders into a readable form.

Instead of emptying your spam folder without giving it a second thought, click on the first supposedly unworthy message and walk through them as if they were an inviting picturesque autumn park in its most vivid foliage on a refreshing cloudless sunny day.

You may find the messages advocating magical remedies for appendages you perhaps do not possess, however the reward of finding priceless gems to marvel at as you walk along this pebbled path will make it worth your time.

Soon after spam poetry becomes your hobby you start wondering if anyone other well cultured individual shares the passion for this young art form. As it turns out, there's a whole bunch of them.

Flocking around the Spam Poetry Institute website like moths around a lamppost these spam enthusiasts are sharing their discoveries with the world. And for those who don't have anything to share, simply reading through the extensive collection of poetic spam is an unforgettable experience.

Take this post's accompanying spam poems, titled "The Tantrum of a Newborn" and "Coming of Fall" respectively, as examples of sheer brilliance of their author. Mastery of words and sounds, playing with the reader in anticipation of the next line, painting a picture of subconscious associations. One way or another, spam poetry is time well spent on getting inspired and discovering your own thought processes.

***UPDATE***

Ed Desautels from Maximum Fiction familiarized me with another form of spam poetry that he learned to create at an innovative writing conference. A good analogy to this "art form" would be creation of sculptures and other artwork types from the parts found in junkyards and garbage containers.

This type of spam poetry is created by creatively adding together only the words or phrases from the original spam email. The end result of this subtraction technique is a convincing spam poem. Click here for a few examples.