The school superintendent who plagiarizes, word for word, his heartfelt personal welcome to students at the beginning of the school year is never embarrassed. He explains that he happened to have found on the web a heartfelt personal welcome to students at the beginning of the school year that said exactly what he wanted to say, so he used that. If you insist he contact the original author, he’ll do that, but he assures you that the guy’s gonna be flattered; what he has done, after all, is an homage.
The poet who plagiarizes the work of better poets who say exactly what he wants to say but say it ever so much better so why not take their words is similarly shocked when people act as if he’s some sort of villain. It’s a postmodern pastiche, for fuck’s sake, an appropriation art comment on the death of originality in our time. If you’ve got a corncob up your ass and can’t get with the program it’s not his fault.
September 13th, 2013 at 8:54AM
I must have missed the boat to the Land of Pastiche Appreciation. But then, truthfully, I even like narrative– so… poor unmodern me.
September 13th, 2013 at 1:25PM
The whole ethos of the present time, to judge by what I saw in the early 2000s (just before retiring from academic life) is that no one should ever be held responsible for anything they say or write. Always it was meant as irony, or satire, or a j/k [joke], or everyone else does it, or . . . ad libitum, ad infinitum. The underlying theme is always, no blame, no shame, no guilt . . . such old-fashioned, “modern” notions they are, utterly unsuited to a post-modern age!
This goes hand-in-hand with what the young women are calling the rise of the man-child, or of Peter Pans (“I *won’t* grow up . . .”!), as they wonder where all the suitable men have gone.
September 13th, 2013 at 2:16PM
Here is my take, with apologies to Banjo Patterson (The Man From Snowy River). It helps to know the Hunter River flows through Newcastle, where this chap lived, and that Uni is the Australian vernacular diminutive for University.
THE POET FROM HUNTER RIVER
There was movement at the Uni, for the word had passed around
That the bloke from Hunter River had been outed,
And that he was now in hiding – out of sight and gone to ground,
Just because of silly rules he flouted.
All the experts and the pundits came from Uni’s near and far,
They mustered to defend their precious trade,
For these poets love hard writing where the poetry prizes are
Even if they “borrow” lines to make the grade.