[New-Poetry] Can't Cope With Copyright Infringement

[JforJames at aol.com]

It's odd to hear a poet complain about this issue. Its the Napster  
controversy come to verse.
 
Wendy Cope certainly had legit complaint about seeing one of her  poems 
attributed to Dorothy Parker.
But the complaint against anthologists reading poems at festivals seems  
awfully petty. I mean the anthologist presumably got permission or paid for the  
rights to reprint the poems, and thus has the right to promote the  anthology 
at any & all suitable venues. Besides, who attends a poetry  festival to hear 
an anthologist read the work of others? This would be  an  ancillary part of 
any festival and it's not something that's used by the  festival organizers to 
save the cost of reading fees as Cope seems to  suggest..
 
My question is: Do these poems floating around in cyberspace actually cause  
a loss of book sales? The person who snags one off the web is the person  who 
in old days would have dropped by the local library and thumbed  thru a few 
books to find & photocopy the poem. Or stood in  the bookstore aisle and copied 
it out right there in full view of the  manager. The person that loves the 
poet's poems buys the book. Those who need a  poem for this or that reason, 
aren't really your book buyers. I don't think so  anyway.
 
It did make wonder how many poets are able to live off their royalties, or  
have royalties enough coming in that loss of some portion of those monies  
means the difference between getting the roof fixed or having to put a bucket in  
attic?
 
Finnegan
 
 
 



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