Below is an excerpt from Dana Gioia’s poem “My Confessional Sestina,” which points light—and exacting—fun at the relationship between writing programs and literary magazines. (The poem was originally published in the October 1983 issue of Poetry—read the entire work there.)

Where will it end? This grim cycle of workshops
churning out poems for little magazines
no one honestly finds to their taste?
This ever-lengthening column of contributors
scavenging the land for more students
teaching them to write their boot-camp sestinas?

Perhaps there is an afterlife where all contributors
have two workshops, a tasteful little magazine, and sexy students
who worshipfully memorize their every sestina.