[New-Poetry] Accidental Plagiarist: The Trouble with Originality

[jforjames at aol.com]

http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2007/spring/campbell-accidental-plagiarist

The Accidental Plagiarist: The Trouble with Originality 
Erik Campbell 
 
 Two weeks after mailing out the poem, I had an essay accepted by a very good journal. I was feeling good about myself and decided to celebrate by rereading Dunn’s Loosestrife (1996).[11] Toward the end of the book I suddenly went cold. I suspect that, had my bladder been full, I would have wet myself, in which case (to paraphrase James Joyce) I would have gone warm, and then cold. In the poem “Parameters” I discovered this line, which I had somehow previously missed: “Our cats like God have never spoken / a word that wasn’t ours.” The only difference between “my” line and Dunn’s was the enjambment. I had decidedly, yet unknowingly, committed HP. I was too shocked to try to will myself dead.

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