Gerald England:
> The problem with Marcus' stance seems to be that he is taking a side and
> rather than allowing free discussion wants to boil things down to some
> either/or position and an argument where there are two sides and one winner.<

The problem with Christine's and Sue's, your, and some others' stance is that
they are accusing me of plagiarism and of not writing poetry at all even within
the accusation of plagiarism. I'm defending myself against both those
accusations. The standard offered as opposed to my notion that poetry is
rhetoric, a way of presenting cliched or banal or trite ideas in ways that make
them non-cliched, non-banal, or non-trite, is that all poetry must be "honest
originality", of which there are on offer a sum total of exactly zero examples
so far.

I am challenging the view that poetry is composed solely of "honest
originality" which is the position from which I'm being accuesed of plagiarism
and of not writing anything called poetry in the first place.

And, once again, I call for an example of "honest originality". The 23rd Psalm
turns out to be a bust as an example, as does the primal ugggg of whoever first
admired the stars at night, in both cases largely because if those are what is
meant by "honest originality" then what are you, what are all other
contemporary poets, writing? Well, it seems from your own stance that you must
all be plagiarists, and within your plagiarism, you're not writing any kind of
poetry at all because it's neither Jewish nor prehistorically primal.

Come, come, people!  Let's have a contemporary example of your vaunted "honest
originality"!  The lack of examples is starting to make it look as if the
notion that poetry must consist of "honest originality" is complete bunk.

> But there are many types of poetry and many sides to poetry -- at the end of
> the day it isn't a question of one being right and another wrong -- there
> are things most people agree on and others where we must agree to disagree.<

I'm sorry, but I'm not merely going to "agree to disagree" about whether I'm a
plagiarist or not. If I am than so is Christine and Sue and all the rest of you
unless you can give me a good deal more than just one example of "honest
originality", even though that seems to be way too much to ask. What you need
is a flourishing school of poets producing "honest originality" in some volume,
and acclaimed as the real stuff as opposed to that stuff you can show is
not "honest originality".

Further, I'm thinking of pursuing this notion by examining the poetry of those
who hold that poetry is "honest originality". I'll be doing some close readings
to show that those who hold that poetry is always and only "honest originality"
are themselves foisting off on the public collections of words that are neither
honest nor original. This could be fun!

> One aspect of poetry is the search for originality -- it may, as Marcus
> points out -- be impossible to find -- but if we stop trying and settle for
> the trite and the banal, we might as well give up poetry altogether.<

Well, certainly those who hold that poetry is always and only "honest
originality" ought to stop claiming to write it if they cannot even use their
own poetry as an example, much less offer an example from any source other than
ancient Jewish myth or speculative fantasy about pre-history!

Marcus