…is not Aram Saroyan’s “lighght”—companies often pay consultants upwards of $75K for product names—but his was the one that got the attention of the U.S. Congress. The poem, which was first published in Chicago Review 19:4 (the Anthology of Concretism), made headlines after George Plimpton included it in an NEA-sponsored anthology that brought Saroyan and CR a $1000 honorarium. That’s when, in Ron Padgett’s words, things got amusing.

Ian Daly tells the whole story at the Poetry Foundation.

(Original copies of CR 19:4 are still available for sale—click and scroll to the bottom of the page.)