Obesity is not merely a problem for fast food junkies. In this land of overindulgence, poetry also seems to be losing the battle of the bulge, judging from the increasing numbers of bloated, mediocre, self-reverential verse fattening the pages of poetry journals, as if pork belly needed more grease. This tendency toward corpulence could be an unfortunate by-product of the internet’s insatiable appetite for words. The internet never rests, let alone closes, so it simultaneously craves and spews verbiage, and will never be satiated.

That also means new, inventive art forms are possible that never could have been developed when the only home for words was books. When writers were bound by the confinements of a front cover, a spine, and a back cover, there wasn’t a whole lot to be done to innovate literature. Unlike the traditional published work, an e-book doesn’t have to have a beginning, middle, and end. Couldn’t it have a beginning, a middle, a second middle, a middle middle, a late middle, ad infinitum? An e-poem could be gigantic enough-if it had, say, ambitions to become a truly eternal document-it could out-epic the epic poem. Just think what Joyce might have spun for his readers if internal monologues didn’t have to meet the requirements of the signature and end at a certain midnight in June-or if Joyce’s words didn’t have to end at all, ever. There are writers capable of creating a program that could automatically generate a perpetual stream of consciousness. Molly Bloom to infinity. Be on the look-out. Get those Wash and Dry’s out. In a country as fat as ours, chances are some word glutton has already embarked on such a pig-out barbecue of linguistic indulgence.

But I’m not the reader who wants to be consumed by the one poet or the one poem to end all others. There are hundreds and hundreds of great writers whom, as things go in this chaotic media blitz blur we call the present, none of us will live long enough to read. Just because there are writers who could generate a poem that will write itself through eternity, it doesn’t mean such writing would contribute to the progression of good (forget great) literature. In fact, isn’t a writer who would monopolize our time with the infinite poem or hold us hostage to the eternal book one whom we should hold in contempt for letting us miss the enchantment of envisioning Xanadu, or forfeit the exhilaration of riding a broom with Her Kind, or feel the pulse of poetic muscle builders like Sylvia Plath or Galway Kinnell?

Ironically, the biggest fat producer in this cyber-publishing feast, which chug-a-lugs manuscripts then regurgitates banquet tables of unbound text, is the prolific, multi-hydra-headed MFA matriculation process in America. Why ironic? Because more likely than not, the multi-hydra-headed schmaltz maker is aliterate. Not illiterate. Aliterate. It doesn’t seem to care much if anyone reads the voluminous word output of the zillions of Creative Writing students (is there any other kind, I wonder? Is there a student of Noncreative or, to be critically hip, Decreative Writing?). The hydra-headed doesn’t seem to care if the same zillions who write their little hearts out ever read any real examples of actual poetry. Scansion leaves a bitter taste on all of its tongues in all of its heads. Iamb? Ptui! Anapest? Don’t be ridiculous! In fact, the hydra-headed rebuffs words other than the ones produced by its Master of Fine Arts Degree candidates, the words reverberating words that reverberate words, reminiscent of Dali’s surrealistic attempt to objectify the notion of the boxes within boxes within boxes that boggle the mind for those who try to analyze the magnificent intricacy of a hand carved jade or coral or ivory Chinese puzzle.

So no one may even be able to scare up an appetite for this never-ending junk poem bounty that keeps glutting space and air. No one may be coming to the table. When the cornucopia is always overflowing (ah, but overflowing with what you ask?), who can tell the next Keats from Diane Keaton? Or Buster Keaton, for that matter?

The other day an important poetry source (important poets are on its board) reported it will be awarding $50,000 to a woman in her twenties who is writing her biography in poetry. Chewing her own fat, as it were. Her gift was intended to “allow her to write exclusively,” which got me thinking that the entire academic diet is in need of an overhaul. Poetry used to be the purview of those blessed with “inspiration,” refined skills, knowledge of other poets, music making, vision only the vates (poet/prophet) possessed-plus experience. A poet was unusually (excepting Keats and very few others) perceptive, someone who had tasted most of the spices in the rack, who had experienced a wide range of flavors in a mouth having more sensitive taste buds than the rest of the crowd. Poets recognized something was happening to them that set them apart. Like Moses and David, poets may have been revered, but they were hardly volunteers.

Medical school applicants are required to sample diverse undergraduate coursework, to lunch on a liberal education (sociology or math or even English) before digging into the heavy supper menu of medical school. The rationale is that a medical doctor needs to know medicine is more than mere science. Why don’t we design a like curriculum for the thousands upon thousands of self-anointed poets, create a diet for the volunteers so the gristle might be trimmed or the fat rendered from their poems? Let’s put them on a diet that resurrects good taste while declogging arteries.

What do you say to sending prospective poets to medical school so they might see words are the least necessary components of poetry?