Mine was a couple of years ago, a student who'd cut & pasted stuff from the
web straight into her Word document. The visual incongruity was so obvious
that the verbal incongruity almost didn't matter. I feel a bit guilty,
though, because I taught her how to paste stuff into Word without it showing
like that... Next essay looked immaculate.
P
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to
> poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Douglas Barbour
> Sent: 21 June 2005 17:16
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: plagiarisms
>
> Hey Ken
>
> my one (well maybe there've been a few others) encounter with
> creative plagiarism was when I was a marker, way back when.
> The person who did it was a bit foolish & also very smart.
> She'd gone into the Queen's library & found a book from the
> 1860s, long out of print, & taken its comments on, yes,
> Shakespeare. Only problem was the style seemed just too out
> of date & I eventually found the tome & the pages transcribed.
>
> A person smart enough to find the damn book could have
> written a pretty good essay on her own, I always thought.
>
> Doug
> On 21-Jun-05, at 9:19 AM, Ken Wolman wrote:
>
> > roger day wrote:
> >
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> Your play was useful in that it allowed me to expose a
> little of my
> >> history to the list, so I tips me hat to you, whoever you are!
> >>
> >> Glad to be of service! I hope my bit-part fitted well in
> your theatre
> >> </bows to rapturous applause>.
> >>
> >> I've thought of taking a Poetry for Dummies course because I've
> >> sometime felt that I've been missing something, something
> that when I
> >> write goes astray. Of course, books and courses are never
> the answer.
> >>
> > And now Dr. Ken's Konfession. For years I believed such a thing
> > existed. Poetry for Dummies. If they can publish books
> like "Sex For
> > Dummies" ("Oh, THAT's what that's for! Hot damn!") and
> "Monte Carlo
> > Simulations for Dummies" (not, I assume, how to win at
> Vingt et Un),
> > why not "Poesie for Dummies" as well?
> >
> > Years ago, feeling that I was cheated of feature by dissembling
> > Nature, having no idea what a poem was, how to write one
> (even though
> > I had), or how to judge one without some Professor saying
> it was good,
> > I tried to find the magic book that had all the answers.
> The book I
> > chose? <sit down> William Empson's _Seven Types of
> Ambiguity_. No
> > joke. No help.
> >
> > Oh, another plagiarism tale. True story. 1973, I'm a teaching
> > assistant. Three profs and me, the Shakespeare lecture course. I
> > thought I'd died and gone to Heaven. Then some kid in my personal
> > section hands me a paper, I forget on what, but as I'm
> reading it I'm
> > thinking "This kid writes fantastically, he can think on paper. Oh
> > God--wait a minute." I focus on the kid. The kid is nice, not a
> > doofus but not THAT bright. All of a sudden the writing sounds
> > familiar. I am the guy writing a dissertation on audience/reader
> > response in Shakespeare, and before I dropped him on his Scottish
> > crown, Macbeth was in there. So I knew the classic
> critical writings:
> > A. C. Bradley, c. 1904. I look at Bradley. I look back at
> the kid.
> > It's the same words. Bradley didn't plagiarize the kid, I
> guess. I
> > forget how, but I got a message to the kid to come to the
> office I was
> > using. He did not seem like a jive-artist, just a jerk.
> He walks in
> > totally unfraid and totally clueless. I confronted him with his
> > unattributed quotes and Bradley's text. I thought the kid
> was going
> > to cry, then faint. He had no idea that what he was doing was not
> > kosher. NOBODY had ever taught this kid about plagiarism. He
> > literally did not know he'd done it. It was easier for the
> teachers
> > along the way to ignore the whole greasy issue until it got to the
> > desk of a 31-year-old teaching assistant. I told him to
> get back to
> > work, he had something like two days to correct the mess he'd made.
> > The paper turned out to be not too hot but it was at least
> HIS not too
> > hot.
> >
> > Ken
> >
> >
> Douglas Barbour
> 11655 - 72 Avenue NW
> Edmonton Ab T6G 0B9
> (780) 436 3320
>
> -- bring lust into the library
> or it is hell.
> Lisa Robertson
>
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