Editing William Ashbless (section)

==Invention==
Ashbless was invented by Powers and Blaylock when they were students at [[California State University, Fullerton]] in the early 1970s, originally as a reaction to the low quality of the poetry being published in the school magazine. They invented nonsensical [[free verse]] poetry and submitted it to the paper in Ashbless's name, where it was reportedly enthusiastically accepted.

{{Quote|text=The college paper printed poetry, and it was close enough to the '60s that the poetry was all just horrible free verse about children and flowers and rainbows. So we figured we could write poetry that would sound very portentous but be, in fact, meaningless. ... We needed a name for our poet and [came up with] "Ashbless". The paper published them, so we wrote another lot that was dumber, and they published that. ... We said [Ashbless] was hideously deformed and couldn't attend any readings or meetings, but he had given us these poems to read in his stead. ... Blaylock and I would often break out laughing in the middle of reading them, which people thought was very insensitive of us, to be laughing at the poetical efforts of our deformed friend. |author=Tim Powers on William Ashbless<ref>[https://www.wired.com/2016/01/geeks-guide-tim-powers/ "How to Construct the Ultimate Conspiracy Theory"], ''Wired Magazine''</ref> }}