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Ken, you are an awesome genius with all those details and references! You must be a professor (oh, strike that, I'm not feeling all that happy about professors today but I need to get over that because the last one I had was as wonderful as you are). U Rock! Thanks! Judy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ken Wolman" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 1:15 PM Subject: Re: "Fled is that Music. So Change the Record" > judy prince wrote: > >> Not good news, Ken. By the way, I should have thanked you for taking me >> seriously and giving all that explanation of your pome which made me >> understand it very well. >> >> I'm sad now, and it has nothing to do with your pomes which I always like >> very much. Actually my heart is broken. I'm holding the poem I got back >> today in class. She gave me an F on it. She said it was plagiarized >> which means copied. But why would I copy anything when I love to write >> poetry?! I'm a sad person right now, K. >> >> J (I never was yo mama, but maybe you could be my papa right now) > > That's appalling. I don't read you as a sociopath whose specialty is > appropriating other people's work as their own. What makes this teacher > think you helped yourself to someone else's work? Can she point at what > in your poetry is a lift or steal, and from whom? People define > "plagiarism" according to different standards. In some cases it's easy: I > take something you wrote and present it as my own work. It's more > difficult if I'm "influenced" to some degree by another writer's work. Is > that plagiarism or learning your craft? Are David Wojahn's poems(?) about > John Berryman, his teacher at UMinn, plagiarized because he deliberately > adopts the Dream Song stanza form? Where's the line between tribute, > influence, and theft? > > It sounds, Judy, like you've got one of those "strict constructionist" > teachers who doesn't even want to detect an influence. What else could > make her think you swiped someone else's work? > > If you want to read about REAL plagiarism in action (you may wish to > eventually), Neal Bowers at the University of Iowa was systematically > ripped off by a guy who took his published poems, changed a word here, a > line break there, and got them into refereed journals under his own name. > There's a review of the book here: > > http://www.smallbytes.net/~bobkat/bowers.html > > Ken >