Ira Silverberg is a well-known literary agent and a well-known gay—his partner is the former New York Times etiquette columnist Bob Morris. He has borne not one but two children via his sperm, reports the Observer. “For years I’ve had one very close friend who always said, ‘When I have a child, I’d like you to think about being the father'... [then] the call came and I hit it on the first shot. Delivered in a baby food jar." Thanks for that, Ira. Kid's gonna love reading this. Remember: privacy begins at conception! [NYO; photo Fishbowl NYC]

At the cocktail party preceding the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses spelling bee last night, former Star editor Joe Dolce was rubbing up against cheetah-sheathed Page Six editor Paula Froelich. Was he here to spell, like Paula? "God no." He was here to cheer on his boy, HarperCollins VP Jonathan Burnham. Joe has been mostly occupied by cheering Jonathan on lately, though he hasn't been completely at loose ends during his year of unemployment: "I was working on a web-based project about design, but I had to pull back from it recently," he said, as a very tall, beautiful woman in a houndstooth skirt and enormous diamond earrings came up behind him and mischievously grinned at everyone. It was Alex Kuczynski, who has been described by this website as a "pervert," a "body modification expert," "somewhat plastically-reconstructed," a "facially-reconfigured semiotician," and most often, "Times rich lady beat reporter." "Hi Bunny!," she said. "I looove your bangs! You look like a person on the 'Brady Bunch'!" Did she mean Cousin Oliver? Whatever, totally charmed! Nikola Tamindzic documented this.

So, just how satanic are Salman Rushdie's agent's verses? Ira Silverberg, who owns the 1972 chapbook of Wylie's stylings that was mentioned here yesterday, was kind enough to share some of them, but first he wanted to make one thing very clear: "I'm a huge fan of Andrew ... Nobody gets that he's one of the least pretentious people in the biz." Well, these poems are certainly unpretentious. They barely pretend to be poems! A selection, including the possibly prophetic "I've (#1)," is after the jump.

British lit agent Andrew Wylie is a very august person, with some very respectable clients: Philip Roth! Salman Rushdie! Nigella Lawson! But we were all young and not-august sometime, and when Wylie was younger, he fancied himself a poet. Another high-powered agent, Ira Silverberg, happens to own a copy of a chapbook that Wylie published in 1972, which he generously shared with Bookforum. "There's a rumor that he has tried to buy up all of the copies," Silverberg told them. But why? "One can only imagine what a Wylie client like, say, Benazir Bhutto would make of such poems as "Hands up Your Skirt," "Warm, Wet Pants," and the determinedly unlyric "I Fuck Your Ass, You Suck My Cock." Oh! Well now. Being fans of dirtiness, we'd love to know more about these poems. Do any of them contain the words "light" or "water?"