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Both of these anecdotes are more illustrative of problem publishers than of problematic copyright laws. There's no law that stipulates maximum quotation lengths of either three lines or 10%--the latter is just a rule-of-thumb measure that's become conventional, while the former is no measure at all, having been applied across the board to Heaney poems of varying lengths, apparently. Publishers like those described here erode fair use (often in a clueless as well as faithless) effort to avoid paying permission fees to each other, which is precisely the aim of the fair-use exemption they thereby undermine. It's a vicious circle that does a real disservice to writers by reducing the audiences for their work, and its absurdity becomes clear when one publisher brings out a study of Heaney or Ondaatje that should win the poet a wider readership, but, in imposing a clip-art quotation policy on its author, no doubt discourages and even loses some potential readers of the poetry. What then goes around comes around again in a reduced audience for that publisher's own book on the given poet. Candice <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >>Well, in print quoting a whole poem gets flagged no matter what. I know >>one person who wrote a book on heaney and had to cut all quotations over >>three lines. And Doug Barbour wrote: >And let me add as both a poet & a critic, that this is a drag. I certainly >wouldn't mind someone quoting a whole poem if they were then discussing it >at some length. And I really feel that for certain kinds of discussion, >having the whole short poem there really helps. I like to point to things >as I talk about them. But like the person on Heaney, I had to maul >Ondaatje's poems, quoting a line or two here & there & hoping any reader >had a book by her side to glance at while reading my discussion. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%