Poetry Scandals: Plagiarism Throughout the Ages

43 thoughts on “Poetry Scandals: Plagiarism Throughout the Ages”

• Hey everyone. Thanks for watching. Exciting news! The first video is up on the second channel. I got the chance to look at and review four different authors. Be sure to check it out here: https://youtu.be/f9OYN8qhbyA

  Poems by Ewan Hardie
  The One About the Boy and Nothing by Ankur Bhanderi
  Poems by Lauryn Farragher
  "Mister Wink" by The Quiet One

  And if you submitted work but don't see it in this first video, don't worry, I'm just taking the submissions as they come. As always, thanks for the support!

• – "The arts, as they develop, grow further apart. Once, song, poetry, and dance were all parts of a single dromenon . Each has become what it now is by separation from the others, and this has involved great losses and great gains. Within the single art of literature, the same process has taken place. Poetry has differentiated itself more and more from prose.
  
  "This sounds paradoxical if we are thinking chiefly of diction. Ever since Wordsworth’s time the special vocabulary and syntax which poets once were allowed to use have been subjected to attack, and they are now completely banished. In that way poetry may be said to be nearer to prose than ever before. But the approximation is superficial and the next gust of fashion may blow it away."
  -C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism , 76.

• There's playing quotes in jazz, playing standards, engaging in pastiche like 12 bar blues form, and then there's… well, it's like pornography because you just know it when you see it. Managers getting composition credits and most of the royalties, minority artists getting copied 1:1 by people that are easier to market in a way that says "This song deserves better than your like." while sounding just… insufferably cocky and uncanny, and people who love to lie and just so happen to have good taste. If they were seen more as curators, the act of copying how they did being the art that expresses who they are, I'd probably see their personalities in a more compelling light than most artists. Just think about a person who desperately wants to picture themselves in another's shoes. Whoever they happen to pick will tell a lot about them, the things that they choose to steal, the lies they thought they could get away with. How do they see themselves, or want us to see them? How does that concept pair with reality, the real person they appear to be? Of course that comparison yields more art on behalf of chaos rather than of the plagiarist's own volition, but there is a strange kind of intentional art there… as if their persona is their canvas and the art of others is their medium. I would be curious to see which things of mine others would be compelled to steal from me, what that would say about them and the strength of the original work. This isn't an invitation to steal from me, though I did release most of my music into the public domain so you'd at worst risk a social faux pas, but if it were to happen I'd be curious to learn about every little detail. I'd be fascinated with you, like you'd be a little pet project of mine. I'd release things to see what you'd bite and what you'd let loose, what kind of food you pick at and play with and what food you devour whole. I've sampled music before, made loops of other people's songs that I slowed down a bit and threw a bunch of effects on before putting a different name on it. With regards to piracy I'm fairly sure that my works wouldn't qualify as an identical free substitute, and people looking for free versions of the songs online wouldn't be able to find them because it's on an obscure Bandcamp release with a different title. Not something I'm trying to make money with, or even respect really, I just felt like making vaporwave and that's how it's made sometimes. I try to tell a story with where I place the songs in the mixtape, and focusing on the song's sample alone is only a small fraction of the whole work's context. I'm not the artists I sampled, I never said that I was. Maybe it's like… found poetry or something. Anyways, because I did all that I'm bound to get into some trouble if I do get popular at some point. In that sense I'm kinda hoping I somehow figure out how to retire and keep making music while being entirely unknown until enough time passes that nobody could even care if they tried. I just like making and releasing stuff. It's fun, I like doing it. It's like being a songbird that sings. I don't care if people like it or give me money for it… but at the end of the day I'll still need to pay bills somehow. If you steal from me, maybe taking my lyrics and publishing them as poems after restructuring them a little, just – help me out if I'm in dire straits one day, alright? I don't need it right now but it might come in handy having a few people in great debt to me. Shit, if you make enough that you can bail me out of blue collar work I'll be giving you ten times as much business. Think about it. All I ask.

• At this point I'm scared to put my poetry out there but at least I know it's original

• unexpected Robert Evans

• That any of this could be considered poetry is beyond me. That anyone could consider them poets is beyond mankind.

• 24:57 – my favorite part

• Great video! Fascinating history.

• Why am I just now learning that Big Joel's name isn't Joel? Or even Big

• God this is the state of modern poetry? At least its mainstream facing incarnation. How wretched

  Aliza Grace does cheugycore Facebook-post (post-)poetry and no amount of smallcaps and missing punctuation will ever make it good

• This is going to bug me until I die, I'm sure you meant to clarify that Seneca the Elder was NOT a Renaissance writer, but one from antiquity which the Renaissance was built upon, but the choice of wording is slightly confusing lol

  Great video though!

• Far too many declarations wrapped in tangentially related examples.
  Why do video essayists and YouTubers all believe that making allusions to an example is an argument?

  Make your points explicit, is this an analysis or just a historical literature review?

  Are you making claims about classic writing or just detailing the history?

• Thanks

• I just dont think that plagiarism matters that much. It's not that terrible! Your next video should be on the lovecraftian evil of bootleg videotapes!

• Hard to believe I'd never heard of commonplace books before!

• Indeed I've noticed a consistent pattern with people whom plagiarize. There is one well known YA author ( I have my own theories on why the YA Dystopian genre itself blew up how it did ) is to him he seems to think IP theft is perfectly fine as long as you're lifting off a corporation.

  And yet in my case I've had passages from my work repeatedly stolen from by people like this, and often without attribution. And that's just with novels. It's gotten to the point where I've had to publish my own work on my own website and completely block all known web scrapers.

  But there was this one guy on twitter, who was part of this one anime fandom, that basically ripped off premise and some elements of my work.

  I genuinely have no idea why people defend stuff like this.

• i’m only halfway through this video and i don’t have the brainpower to leave a better thought out comment, but i really love this type of video!! i feel like i’ve been searching for this channel for a long time. so, thanks for filling that void for me :3

• Great video! Little correction: at 6:39, you say Petrarch when you mean Plutarch xx

• Can you link Joel’s video in the description?

• I think there is a tradition of allusion in poetry that is under-acknowledged here.
  There are 4 levels of "allusion" that I can determine.

  1. Referencing. Like when Dante in La Commedia speaks by name of various historical figures, or when Herman Melville repeatedly discusses The Bible in Moby Dick.

  2. Allusion. Much more in the vein of T.S. Eliot. For example, in The Waste Land, Eliot writes "O Lord thou pluckest me out / O lord thou pluckest me // burning". These lines can be found in The Confessions of St. Augustine, written hundreds of years before. Though one could say that this is plagiarism, it's not like Eliot is taking the entirety of St. Augustines Confessions and trying to pass it off as his own, and I think that is the important distinction. If Eliot were to have taken an entire chapter of St. Augustines Confessions, then put it into The Waste Land and tried to pass it off as his own, that would be plagiarism. But alluding to various lines from various sources does not seem to me plagiarism.

  3. Imitation. Take for example, Thomas Grays translations. Some of them are called "translations" (i.e. "Translation of [Torquato] Tasso"; and they are indeed just translations), and some are "imitations" (i.e. "Imitation of Propertius"). The difference is that the imitation is essentially just playing as, say, Propertius, or Horace, or whoever else. It speaks like them, writes like them, uses their ideas, etc.
  Imitation without credit is plagiarism. They're taking other poets work, but unlike Gray, not acknowledging that they're mostly taking, and not suffusing it with any original work. What Eliot was doing was not imitation – it was allusion. What Gray did (in some of his 'translations' – not his original poems) is imitation, but because he acknowledges the debt, there is no issue. The issue with Aliza Grace is that there's no honesty about the imitation: they're just taking with accrediting.

  4. Quotation. Like that of Marianne Moore's, who simply placed quotation marks around derived material. I don't see a need to elaborate.

  I acknowledge the differences because plagiarism is a damning accusation, and should not be thrown around willy nilly, thus accidentally victimizing allusive poets and weakening criticism of plagiarism.

  Without allusion, we lose intertextuality in poetry.

  What Eliot and what Shakespeare did is not plagiarism, but allusion.

• Why not trying to connect The Waste Land with Pound? As per Moody, based on some poems of fairy theme from A Lume Spento he seems to have been aware of Cawein. He was also involved in Ulysses, at least in its publishing.

• I wouldn't consider me a proper poet by any stretch of the imagination, but i do write poems every once in a while and post them online, and i get such joy from doing that, that thinking of people… Plagiarizing poetry? Just… Confuses me so much.
  And not just in the why, but also the how. Like. ??? I understand in the cases of translation hiding the plagiarism, and also the ones with no changes whatsoever, but. How do you even change a few words from a poem, call it your own, and have it still stand on its own?? Every word is there for a reason and it's not like with prose where you can rewrite and restructure sentences with no problem. It's a poem. And if you wanna keep the meter or rhyme or general lyricism… You can't exactly do that. Just. How???? ???

• 24:26 fantastic wit

• Not true she wrote these!

• You should google the Ern Malley affair. It was a poetry hoax in Australia during the 1940s. Although it was a deliberate fraud, rather than a case of plagiarism, the authors relied on plagiarised passages for the bulk of the work. Some still contend that they made poetry despite themselves.

• I like to imagine that Plagiarism Today is a trade publication for plagiarists

• Great vid

• A writer's fine work is gold
  And theirs alone to hold
  Though you may read a clever line
  And find it rings with the best of rhymes
  (Or the worst of rhymes),
  Acknowledging what is yours and mine
  Is what makes all the difference

  But what light through that old wisdom breaks
  Once more unto the breach of time …or something?
  Would a poem by any other author not read just as neat?

  No

  When I conquer the mighty pen, and spill its fresh, black ichor across a barren sheet of paper,
  As though pouring the life-giving blood of Heaven over a thirsting land, and turn
  Page, page again as I write,
  Feverishly, as fine metal gleams with the brilliant spark of creation
  Such that the very gods must imbue my hand of their own ancient craft… indeed; enthousiasmos!

  CALLIOPE in her most admiring grin, now delights in all other artists' chagrin!
  And drowning deep in DIONYSUS' delights, I distill the divine, turning water to wine!
  And ARES now bows his helmed head in respect, for by the cut of my words might his swords he neglect!
  And thus graced of the greatest of human kind's feats,
  We adjourn to the place where OLYMPIANS meet
  We revel and rave as all time trails away
  And at last all lament as I admit I'll not stay
  I approach proud ATHENA, wipe the tears from her eyes
  We all share a last laugh as we say our goodbyes
  I never look back at their heavenly hearth
  As I leap from its heights
  And I crash back to Earth

  Now returned midst the many fine minds of my kind
  I break the clasp of my book, and its pages unbind
  Standing tall above all, that none might be unaware
  I present my great work, and I loudly declare:
  "LOOK ON MY WORK, YE WRITERS, AND…
  Jot down its contents…
  In your own personal journals…
  For your own later use…
  Huh…

  It would seem that the despair is all mine, after all"

  Now indeed, it is true: we share these words and this world
  But would my work yet exist had not my journey unfurled?
  Thus of you, my dark-feathered friends, I implore:
  When asked if you'll poach, quoth the Poet: "Nevermore."

• Sir, you confuse Big Joel with noted argumentarian little joel and that's very problematic they are two completely different joles who are independent of Henry. I will be sending an email to your editor.

• Wisecrack did a great video on how some of the accusations of plagiarism are politically motivated. People are going after scholars and people in the education community and posting "hit pieces" where they call people's work plagerized even if that person did try to cite the source they just improperly cited it. I know you're talking about something a little different but it's another interesting aspect as to why there are so many new plagiarism claims and scandals.

• Joel needs to change up his look, I thought he was Bad Empanada.

• The most significant finding of this video is the knowledge that Joel's real name is Henry

• Has hbomberguy just become the representative of plagiarism?

• something rotten jumpscare :00

• It's all very much cultural
  The need to have ownership over something that's 90% based on other people's inventions is totally individualistic, and often motivated by the need for profit and survival.

  It's funny how like the 12 bar blues format is not patented, trademarked, protected in any way. Most people create based on other people's work, music and poetry are technologies. Modern ip laws and philosophies are deranged

• Maybe one of the things to alleviate the situation would be to give more power or maybe more chances to people who are trying to lift their own voice and minimize the need for a plagiarized work to exist in the first place. Many authors/poets/creators may as well resort to such acts out of the appeal of being recognized quickly and with lesser effort, especially since the publication sphere as well as the audiences in general are so much more overcrowded with content and art alike and the competition to make a living out of it all is tougher than ever.
  On the contrary, honest conversations of what is commonplace and where the boundaries of that extend in poetry/prose and art, at least in the contemporary time, would also be something to keep in mind, as long as the end goal is geared towards art and creators alike.
  But that's just what I take from the video, feel free to add more to it, of course.

• My problem in the case of people like Sheree Mack and other people calling themselves victims of "witch hunts" is that I have a hard time feeling bad for them when they become lauded and well liked poets off the back of other people's work. They make MONEY despite stealing other people's words, money that their victims will probably never see. I'm sorry she felt like jumping off a bridge but at the same time, what about the people who she stole from? how many of them felt a similar despair to having their work taken, how many of them would love to have the kind of money that Christian Ward or Graham Nunn or that broad from Tik Tok have made off the backs of their work? Sheree Mack lost her lecturer position at a university but it was a PAID position. None of her victims got to enjoy that. So no, I don't feel sorry for her nor anyone else of her ilk.

• I (dont) love how its like passively acceptible to demean french people and the french language considering the people of france by and large have been fighting in the streets for progressive/worker's struggles all along (the likely reason its popular to demean them in western societies to begin with) but also because the French language is a combination of Latin-based languages and the indigenous languages of the native people of france. Like obviously we love ragging on ppl different from us (I guess) but why do we as people who think of themselves as progressices and intellectuals feel so happy to demean an entire other group of people we dont bother listening to? I'm tired of this shallow hate for no reason and although I considered following you because of how well this video is made, I'm reconsidering because of your "hehheh its cool to dog on french people for no reason right" comment. (I'm not French btw nor am I upset, just disappapointed.)

• Perplexing.
  That one is unwilling to stand by "bad' original work and move on — perhaps to better, more honest art.
  One thing I know, as "poet" or as a writer drawn to experimentation and the "prose poem" form: Only the author can instantly say why, and how, any "failure" occurs.

• There once was a man from cantucket

• 1 Old Town, Stratford-upon-Avon CV37 6BG, United Kingdom

  There you go, I doxx'd Shakespeare for you all.

• “Whatever is said well is mine.” – me

• Being considered a bad writer, I would argue, is a moral consequence

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