What stops me from publishing poetry on this site is that we all suffer from poetry anxiety. As soon as people offer poetry we nervously await bad rhymes or over-sentimentality. I found a word on several Internet sites to describe this: metrophobia, meaning fear of poetry.

One psychology site describes the effect of metrophobia:

…each year this surprisingly common phobia causes countless people needless distress.

They offer an inexpensive clinic to cure your metrophobia (starting at $2497).

They also hold clinics for hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia, a fear of long words. They say:

…each year this surprisingly common phobia causes countless people needless distress.

They offer an inexpensive cure (starting at $2497).

The page content stays identical, only the phobia name changes.

Creating phobia names is a word game and the Internet is full of these invented words. Disappointingly metrophobia is one of these neologisms; as is hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia.

Another wonderful one is spectocloacaphobia, the fear of one’s eyeglasses falling in the sewer.

So be careful choosing your words.