Poetry Scandals: Plagiarism Throughout the Ages
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- čas přidán 25. 06. 2024
- Poetry, like all art forms, has a deep history of plagiarism. That said, the true meaning of poetic plagiarism has changed over time. Join me in this video essay as we take a look at some of poetry's most prominent cases of plagiarism.
0:00 Intro: Aliza Grace
3:05 The Renaissance: William Shakespeare
7:03 Romanticism: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
10:50 Modernism: T. S. Eliot
16:12 Postmodernism
17:02 Christian Ward
17:52 David R. Morgan
18:35 Graham Nunn
19:27 Andrew Slattery
20:35 C.J. Allen
21:08 Pierre DesRuisseaux
22:07 Sheree Mack
25:07 Ailey O'Toole
26:10 Conclusion: Why poets plagiarize
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#poetry #poem #poems #literature #writing #creativewriting #plagiarism #shakespeare #tseliot
Citations: docs.google.com/document/d/1_... - Zábava
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: czcams.com/video/f9OYN8qhbyA/video.html
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!
Alternatively: encourage people to copy as much creative work as possible.
(Within reason)
@@John_Malka-tits - "If you plagiarise more than three authors, it's research."
@@FTZPLTC makes me genuinely kinda wonder what critical mass of "poetic referencing" is required before you reach the point where the only facet of plagiarism that remains is a potential lack of attribution
after all, if you have a poem with twenty lines swiped from twenty poems, all organized into coherent stanzas, then it's kinda hard to argue that there ain't any creative thought, skill, nor interpretation put into cobbling together that house of cards, yeah?
@@hi-i-am-atan - Yeah, the "but there are only so many combinations" angle is always a little tricky. Accusations of plagiarism in music are pretty common, but that's arguably a much more limited range of elements (24 basic chords and only so many ways to arrange them that make sense).
I can see how poetry might be similar, as there are methods of constructing lines that are kinda tried-and-tested - so it's not impossible for people to use the same method to put similar words together in similar order. And if it's the kind of poetry that rhymes (the proper kind), that's going to limit that a lot. Basically, it'd be very easy for two people to come up with the same dirty limerick because a lot of the ways that they could be different from each other are closed off by the structural constraints.
Once you get into the realm of long-form prose, I think it's much more clear-cut - something either has big chunks of texts that are essentially the same... or it's just a few common themes and a big case of sour grapes.
:/ I wish you'd mentioned earlier that you didn't want us to harass William Shakespeare. I've already written up and nailed a whole callout parchment for the bulletin in the village square. He'll be abrogated for sure!
Blast! I just saw the parchment and wrote of it to my local monastery - I shall have to send another to clarify, posthaste!
I called his boss
That slubberdegullion!
@@tazandalsoalastnameYOUVE BEEN REPORTED FOR LANGUAGE.
I had already announced Williams place of residence for all to see on the bulletin of twittering
The most significant finding of this video is the knowledge that Joel's real name is Henry
He's not actually called Joel? I feel betrayed
@@tomlxyzhe is also not big or little, he's of a completely average size. Also judging by fact you didn't know this I guess you also didn't know that he calls his dog dump truck
@@tomlxyz his name is Henry Joel I think
Rupi Kaur has also faced a LOT of plagiarism allegations - by Nayirrah Waheed, Parvana Reddy. There have been eerie similarities to the works of Warsan Shire, Pablo Neruda, and other poets. Yet she is given the title of "the woman who saved poetry and made it popular." She also refused for years to even respond to the allegations. It's hard to wrap your head around.
Oh true! I've heard of those allegations before, I can't believe I didn't remember or consider that when making this video. Whack; now I might have to do a sequel, haha.
@@RoughestDraftsI would watch a sequel! 🙏🏿
If Rupi Kaur is the saviour of oetry then I think it's beyond saving.
@@RoughestDraftsAmber of Chapo Trap house brought up a couple years ago that people are turning watching movies and TV shows into homework.
Plagurism is real real bad. But it is also not a crime... unless you're a university student.
It's our hyper individualist and nacacistic culture that has an unhealthy fixation on authentic individualism.
The best work is stuff that is copied SO POORLY it became its own thing.
Look at rock and roll. Led Zeplin literally ripped off some blues musicians SO BADLY they didn't get sued for 60 years.
Meanwhile in that 60 years led zeplin would inspire hundreds of thousands of poor imitators, that would carry on the rock tradition for generations.
If we would have #canceled xeplin, the stones, sitar playing George Harrison, for ahem "plagurising" or simply copying someone else's work- people may have never heard the source that they're copying from.
she can have oetry @@femmytwinkmachinst8941
*drops sick reference to famous past works * 200 years later people saying i stole it ;-;
It really be like that
Like Terentino-haters will say he stole, but he's really just making references to famous works that had a heavy influence on his style lmao
@@sullyschwartz2365 There is a scene in the movie version of the Jesus Christ Superstar musical where the scene starts with all the characters posed in the same positions as Leonardo Da Vinci’s last supper. It’s one of those references you do with art all the time, but imagine someone saying the director stole the scene from Da Vinci. Insane.
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’m with you. It always smacks of narcissism when someone’s like “Consequences for my actions??? Why can’t people see I’m the REAL victim? 😭”
seeing her describe that she felt like she was being attacked by a lynch mob after she stole from a black woman made me so fucking sick. wow, i wonder who else has historically been attacked by lynch mobs
Sheree Mack's case is particularly egregious to me because clearly the reason for people's leniency towards her is at least partially rooted in the fact that she's a WOC, who had seemingly earned critical acclaim and an academic position purely for her artistry (in a sea of whiny white dudes, as the video demonstrates). And people don't want to lose that, for obvious reasons.
Her phrasing it as 'lynching' stood out as exceptionally manipulative, considering the context.
Haven't read her, but after that, I'm almost certain her work heavily emphasised "the black experience" and positioned itself as raw and colourful and authentic lol
@@notalltheremyself Whiny white dudes? Awfully reductive.
I haven't watched the whole video yet because I've paused to read the plagiarized poems. It strikes me how like with Somerton's plagiarism through the act of stealing work and presenting it as one's own it makes it more inauthentic and flatter. Specifically the poem by Kristina Mahr "You Won't Know This"
That specific poem (which I have never read before today) has a rhythm to it and is vulnerable. (I don't know if others would consider it good, but it touched my heart.) But in changing the poem to plagiarize it, Aliza grace destroyed the rhythm and feeling of it all.
When I watched Hbomb's Plagiarism video one of the instances of stolen work jumped out at me. The very personal story a trans man told about his feelings around the movie Mulan. Somerton is obviously not a trans man so he had to scrub all personal touches from his presentation on Mulan and in doing so took the human quality out of what he was making.
Plagairism isn't just stealing. By its very nature it destroys what makes art personal...because its not personal. Its fucking stolen and any semblance of vulnerability, nuance, and personal touch is destroyed in order to hide the crime. I'll probably have more to say once I watch the rest of the video (currently I'm at 1:14). But already my teeth are grinding a bit lol.
This🖕 is what needs to be said, and it can even be framed ethically and morally. By stealing (plagiarizing) other people's work, you're not only being greedy or selfish, but also disingenuous to the person you're stealing from.
Morally, plagiarizers, especially the most egregious ones, don't just steal, they actively steal. They actively seek people's work to copy, because they have a sense of entitlement to the work. Because they're successful and you're not. A "I am big and you are small"- mindsets. In a sense, I get it... People always look for the easiest way to maximize your return. Some pervasive calculus to grind culture...
But more importantly, ethically, Immanuel Kant specifically mentioned the act of stealing in regard to Deontology. It doesn't do us any good when any one person can just rip us off, thereby discrediting what we're attempting to achieve through these little symbols we call words, sounds, language, expression, culture. It reminds me that language is primarily a tool, an extension of the human experience; what Werner Herzog calls the 'ecstatic truth.' There is an ugly beauty in truth and that we seek honestly, no matter what we have to do to get there; we seek what is most true to help guide us through this hallucinogenic reality.
I really like how you put this. If a person isn't really putting themselves into the art they borrow from, then the authenticity and intention, along with the heart, are gone.
It's almost like uncanny valley - you can tell that it's off, but don't know why. Or like corporate art - soulless because it's created with disingenuous purposes.
As a songwriter, I can fully admit to having lifted one-off lines or concepts from artists or poets I admire. But the contexts I've placed them in, the stories they tell, and the feelings they invoke are so vastly different from the source material that I don't consider it plagiarism. I just found that another artist presented something in a way that resonated , and I (a) felt that their phrasing was perfect for what I was trying to convey, and (b) wanted to honour them by threading them into my own art.
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 without 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.
By the way, plagiarism is almost certainly an issue, but one oughta learn the difference between allusion and plagiarism before accusing someone of being a plagiarist. Once one is familiar with allusion, I think it is obvious what is allusion and what is plagiarism.
Thank you. I had the exact same thought and was baffled that the academic source quoted in the video referred to the Julius Caesar thing as plagiarism “in a modern sense”… what, because he adapted quotes about a well-known historical figure from one of the available sources of information about that figure? I feel like calling Shakespeare a plagiarist is just one step off from saying he didn’t write his plays… call it a persistent green-eyed monster. That’s from Othello, btw. I didn’t make that up. Shakespeare did. Or did he? 🧐
I wouldn’t consider the renaissance writers plagiarism simply because they were doing something commonly accepted at the time, and I’m not a huge fan of retroactively applying such criteria. Shakespeare for example isn’t remembered for how original his stories are, but how well he wrote his prose. Yes things like his description of Cleopatra’s barge in Antony and Cleopatra were taken from historical sources, but he did reword it beautifully into poetry, and that’s kind of what mattered at the time. Especially since the historical works in question would probably have been commonly known, so it’s not like him doing it was this dark secret. I imagine it would have been kind of like putting a fun spin on a famous quote today. Like opening a book with “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of an accountant”. We know where most of this quote comes from, because it’s famous, and then it’s got a twist at the end because I guess that’s funny. Writers do this all the time, and it works when we are all in on the joke. It’s a far cry from some of the things you mentioned, which are pretty serious in my opinion.
Wild line of thinking. Mass acceptance being self certifying should not be extrapolated.
@@acksawblackyou don’t understand. Shakespeare doesn’t count because what he did was on the level of (and sometimes literally) fanfiction. His contemporaries, including the people he copied, all agreed. Some of those people copied him too (the sequels to Taming of the Shrew being the obvious examples).
@@acksawblack Ok let me make a more contemporary example for you. Weird Al. His parody songs work because we know the original. Sure they work great on their own as well, and maybe in 500 years some of the original songs he is parodying will be long lost so that Weird Al's version will be the only one left. However, does the fact that the original song might be lost or forgotten in 500 years negate the fact that we can appreciate his parodies as parodies right now? It shouldn't. Now remember that Shakespear was writing his plays almost 500 years ago. The fact that we still know where he drew his references from is amazing, and shows that he was actually being pretty damn transparent with them. These are famous works that would have been on every well educated person's curriculum, and indeed are still read today. Think of any tv show or video where if someone says they "want to be the very best" and someone makes a joke by following up by saying "like no one ever was?". That's funny because we know that those are the first two lines of the pokémon theme song. That's how referential humour works.
@@nezahuatez Not necessarily, someone taking your work then , was still someone taking your work and saying it was their own. Even if the word plagiarism wasn't coined then it still was plagiarism. Not transformering something and just presenting it as your own is just stealing no matter the century.
That's because plagiarism is a phenomenon of the copyright/intellectual property system, a natural result of capitalism.
I personally feel human art should be considered more collaborative/cumulative, and remixes, collages, and story retellings are all natural human art.
I just don't understand how professionals can tell students "if you plagiarize on any assignment, you can be kicked out of your program" but then when they do it on a THESIS for a Ph.D and lose their jobs they find it "too harsh"...
Like no one is mobbing you in the streets, you are literally reaping what you've sown
facts
I may come off as a bitter cynic, but if you ask me, there's really only one reason someone consciously plagiarizes: greed. Not just in terms of money (let's be frank here, there isn't much money in writing) but also in terms of prestige and social status. While poetry is less popular than prose there is a certain ring to being a "poet". Some of these "poets" recognize that they aren't all that good at writing but don't have a wish to improve, so they'll just skip that and change up someone else's work and hope nobody catches on, and it seems that it's easier to do that with poetry. Getting to write "New York Times bestseller" in your bio is far more important than maintaining your morality and integrity.
But while that is pretty disheartening it's also good that the plagiarized parties are speaking up and we get to find out who wrote the poems we enjoy.
There may not be a lot of money in writing per se but I have to imagine there's a decent amount of money in Tick Tock and Instagram engagement through monetization and sponsorships?
Or they are unconsciously borrowing or independently inventing...
Jesus christ put the torches down one gay made a video and everyone is paranoid about which plagurist is about to get reviewed in our community so we can flog them.
There are plenty of people who plagiarize without greed being involved. To say there's only one reason would be very reductive and counterproductive to the larger conversation around poetic plagiarism.
@@Nichrysalis out of all the conversations to have about poetry...
You people wanna talk about poetic "plagurism".
Go outside.
Get inspired.
Write about it.
Realize all feelings have been felt before. Everything is growing and changing archetypally.
We would benefit alot from ripping off the right people.
Lots of people want to be a writer, a lot less want to write.
Being considered a bad writer, I would argue, is a moral consequence
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.
The pure pleasure of poetry is finding out something you did not know before you wrote the poem. At its core, it is way beyond the ego. Plaguarism is nothing more than an ego game. Some self proclaimed "poets" know so little about poetry they don't even steal good poetry. Writing poetry is great. Stealing is bad. Simple my friends.
I think paradoxically a way to influence plagiarists to stop is maybe to start being open with our inspirations, and maybe post them side by side to our own.
"Here is a poem I like. And here is a version I did but with my own ideas" and such works can be very similar and then let the wider public decide what's ok or not.
That would take away any excuses as "I forgot to remove your poem when I copied it."
That sounds like a citation
@@TwoForFlinchin1yeah lol
i feel like the increasing ownership people have of their work is a double edged sword. people deserve to be recognized for their work, and art is a way of communication, if you erase the source of the art youre silencing the artist and what they wanted to say. its good we care about that sort of thing now more than we did in the past. but at the same time its encouraged this individualism in people where the necessery process of taking inspiration from others and allowing others to do the same to you is looked down more than it was in the past, being open about your inspirations is discouraged. the very cool process of one creation inspiring another is seen as shameful
I've started doing this with my short stories. To hell with the obsession of trying to be oh so original. It's all been done before, but art remains fun in all its cycles and repetition because individuals continue to add to its ocean, drop by drop.
@@VultureSkins There have been other ways as well, such as the use of "After ..." in the title of the poem or even, in the case of verse translations, using a similar technique that indicates the source text. There were a number of translations of the Psalms that took the latter technique in the early to mid-modern period.
using someone else's written words as scaffolding for your own and then "forgetting" to remove the traces is an absolutely nuts thing to say holy shit. Also this is another great video
Imagine just submitting scaffolding to a contest and winning
You’re leading by example with your consistent citations, bravo. Great video
I can understand how Renaissance writers didn't stake claim on any one idea or another. There was very few people writing, and fewer ideas floating around. As time went on we got more and more original works, and then it became necessary.'
I'm a writer and I could NEVER ever accidentally submit the incorrect manuscript. You can't, like even if it's printed on paper you would never accidentally print the wrong one. Also why are the adding the work into their own work if someone else's work was a guide. I have used tons of sources for inspiration for my work, but I would never ever just copy-paste text into my document. Never.
There were actually more ideas floating around in the Renaissance
@@scrot1856
You and I can only assume tbh. Like it just makes sense why archaic writers might not have wanted to be like "you're stealing my work". More so than any writer today.
depending on how old what you're referencing is, at some point it really does become a tool to express yourself. little bits and blocks of text which can find new meaning in the modern day.
this is done by plenty of authors who reference texts in the public domain, but more often than not they pick the really popular stuff to take from. like the meme, 90% of english books are authored by two. God, and Shakespeare
Good artists copy. Great artists steal xD
This is like the entire plot of RF Kuang’s book Yellowface lol
Why am I just now learning that Big Joel's name isn't Joel? Or even Big
Medium Charles
Using the Sakespeare line about Brutus not being taken alive is a bad example of copyright infringement. Brutus was a real man whom the Roman people really wouldn't take alive,considering his crime. Does Plutarch own the idea of Brutus being in hotwater after killing Juilius Ceaser in real life?
Also copyright law didn’t exist back then.
The example of Shakespeare's use of North is hardly worthwhile. Not only are the standards different, but by what mechanism could the authors of that day credit other authors in a stage play? Obviously these words would have been considered authoritative as genuinely historical for Shakespeare and most of the speeches known to the audience.
Exactly. It would be like having a book referencing Shakespeare heavily today without including references in the text. We are familiar enough with Shakespeare’s big works that we would just know. And we would praise the author for making such clever and creative use of it. Yes I’m thinking of a specific book by Terry Pratchett, why do you ask?
Point is nobody is going to think these elements are entirely Pratchett’s own invention. In fact the joke depends on the audience knowing they aren’t. These histories Shakespeare used would have been as famous in his day as he is in ours. A far far cry from what these recent scandals have been about.
You can see examples of modern writers trying to shoe horn intertextual references into their works. It typically takes one of two forms. Either the narrator names drop a famous writer, philosopher etc and rambles on about them or the characters are made to do it. It's typically as clunky and inelegant as it sounds.
@@osmarmacrob Dorothy L. Sayers is one of the few writers who could pull it off. Mostly because she leaned into the silliness and made it more into a kind of game. Specifically "Busman's Honeymoon". Still that's one of the few books where it doesn't come off as clunky.
his name isn't Joel??
No, it's Johl
The more you know, the more you Johl
Thanks for sending me down a rabbit hole!
My hot take: Aliza Grace doesn't exist. Minus other signs of me going "hmm this sounds fake," I don't think she's a person. Well, there's a person behind the name, but her name isn't Aliza (or Elodie) Grace and she's not a teen author.
I noticed, when looking up her "books" on Amazon, that "Art of Letting Go" is copywritten. To the US Copyright Office! There are 2 "Art Of Letting Go" from 2023. One looks like an album. The other is for literary works.
Her name is Christina Valdez Ware. She was born in 1980.
She has 1 dissolved LLC (Convo Keepers, related to advertising, existed Feb 2020 - Sept 2021) and 2 currently active LLCs (Aligned Perfectly, retail shop, created April 2022; JI, professional, scientific, and technical services, created July 2022). I cannot find info on any of these companies. And considering one is active as a retail shop? There should be something.
So yeah. I think 19-year-old Aliza/Elodie Grace is actually a woman named Christina who is 44.
I know your video is on plagiarism but you did this to me so you get to reap the rewards.
hey i decided to take a look at this and it looks like this Christina Valdez Ware did actually write a separate self-help book called "The Art of Letting Go: A Guide To Forgive Yourself, Build Resilience, and Discipline Your Mind To Become The Best You" so you're probably off on that
@@loomic Ah, thank you! For some reason, her book didn't populate when I did my search for her. Oh well, I still don't think she's who she says she is but at least it's not that person lol
I have for some reason thought "poetry is dead" ('cause of the lack of poetry channels here) but turns out TikTok is taking the lead in shooting things up...including well plagiarism.
What are you talking about?! ALL music with lyrics, but especially rap, is just poetry put to music.
not really, poetry is defined by the fact that it's spoken and not accompanied by anything. lyrics have gone with music for just as long as poetry has been written, it's not like at some point they were suddenly fused after millenia of existing seperately
@@WhitneyDahlinincredibly reductive view of poetry
@@h.w.4482 There is a lot of poetry that contradicts this. Allen Ginsberg was accompanied by the poet-musician Arthur Russell, Jayne Cortez’s performance of She Got He Got was accompanied with jazz percussion, Sappho’s poetry I’m pretty sure was intended to be performed with lyre accompaniment. Also a lot of poetry isn’t meant to be spoken either but that feels beside the point.
My poetry teacher put it this way, all poetry can be songs but not all songs are poetry, he defined the difference as a lot of modern songs tell you everything (they lack symbolism and don’t require deeper thought to understand the meaning “there’s no mystery”). I’m not sure I’m inclined to agree with his definition entirely but the rest of the class seemed to agree.
For all that naming and publicly shaming (not personally attacking) doesn't seem to do, its still the best method. Simply getting the word out and making it known inside and outside the community is often enough to change buying and consumption habits.
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.
I think one of the more encouraging outcomes of the hbomberguy video is that almost everyone seemed to acknowledge that there *is* something wrong with plagiarism.
Those who made half-hearted defences of it did so in incredibly vague and abstract terms that suggest that they just weren't paying attention - like they had their "no art is original" take pre-typed and ready to go when the word "plagiarism" started trending on Google. It is funny that the defence of plagiarism is the same whether someone has constructed a similar narrative from the same fistful of common tropes... or whether they've copied someone's work verbatim and then swapped a few words around to fool any software that might be scanning it.
Still, I do think it's healthy that plagiarism accusations are relatively rare, purely because confirming that plagiarism has actually occurred requires work, and most plagiarists will only get caught out if they're particularly blatant about it. I think it's something most of us would want to be sure of before we make the accusation, but maybe we should be more confident.
i always heard so much about plagiarism when writing in school that i’d never really considered plagiarism beyond my current time or in the past. really interesting history lesson, and poses a great question: what do we do about plagiarism?
These all may seem far fetched as none of them will be implemented with immediate effect but: take the right action against those using others "words" and, just write in your own style. Majority of people might not like it but you just have to be true to yourself and/or learn from other poets but don't copy them. ASAT. I'm a poet so I know poems can be below your expectations most times but at least they are original.
This was a great video! I’m glad we’re shifting to a normalisation of citations. Something I see a lot online is when quotes get misattributed or detracted from ownership or context (“Someone once said” / “I once read”). It’s pretty normal in daily conversation, but gets murkier in online content. Which is tricky because a lot of online content is structured like organic conversation. I feel like online there’s also a culture of “everyone owns everything and nobody owns anything” which gets pretty uncomfortable sometimes
Too jaded to care about pronouncing "Tranches de Vie", but has the audacity to drop a perfect "Noroît"
2:42 I want to hear about the ✨**FLASHY**✨ cases of literary plagiarism
I’m so glad I found your content a few videos ago, great stuff
Interesting video, though I found the lack of labels on pictures a little confusing. For example, the name 'Graham Nunn' comes up under the picture of Anthony Lawrence, and it's not entirely clear from immediate context that that's who the picture is of. It's only in the next section that it becomes clear it's Lawrence, not Nunn.
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.
I think there is a much deeper conversation about copyright laws, deep learning algorithms, and the role of language. I've known that poetry is for the people; poetry is like bread- we eat it and consume it to nourish our famished souls. But I've been digesting the ways that deep learning models have begun to emulate the ethereal group-think of our forgotten words. I listened to a podcast (Machine Learning Street Talk - Deep Learning is a strange beast), and he referenced Walt Whitman's Song of Myself, which really made me reflect more on how much my dumb brain differs from a rampant hallucinating LLM! Here's a quote from Song of Myself, which may have context/subtext with the broader conversation (don't bother me to reference the lines)(the internet needs a standardized bibliography or at the very least a way to streamline hyperlink integration):
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
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."
If we're discussing the history of plagiarism, let's not forget the first person to used the term and brilliantly complained about it: Martial (1st century):
I.29: "Rumor has it, Fidentinus, that you recite my little books in public just like your own. If you want the poems called mine, I’ll send you them for nothing. If you want them called yours, buy out my ownership."
I.52: "Quintianus, I commend you my little books-that is, however, if I can call them mine when your poet friend recites them. If they complain of harsh enslavement, come forward to claim their freedom and give bail as required. And when he calls himself their owner, say they are mine, discharged from my hand. If you shout this three or four times, you will make the kidnapper [plagiario] ashamed of himself."
Brilliant stuff!
Very nicely researched! To add an idea of mine as an author and a scholar of literature - allusion and reference are almost necessary elements for creating literature as an interconnected web of works. It is how genres are made and periods defined. Also, the readers mostly want to read "the same thing but different" which again helps with genre formation. Originality is horribly overrated. However, if somebody just takes an unknown poem and copies it (for it to be a reference it has to be widely known, like Ulysses or ancient authors, you know!) without trying to communicate anything by that act, yeah that guy is a thief.
I had to go check, and yes Aliza Grace is getting absolutely shredded in the reviews on Goodreads.
This video clears up stuff I was thinking about when it comes to plagiarism in ART, after the Hbomber video. He starts off with an example of art, but the rest of the video is only applicable to academic work.
Found your channel last night, really enjoying the content!
Great video! Fascinating history.
Not even into poetry but I'm really enjoying all of your videos man, keep it up
i cant wait until you’re on Nebula 💕
Haha, that's so kind of you, thank you. But whether or not something like that happens, I'll just keep taking it one video at a time. Thanks for watching!
I didn’t expect to hear my university on this video, great pronunciation of Brisbane btw!
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.
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
Very interesting. I had a poem published in a journal back in the early 2000s and I’ve hated it ever since. I thought I was original, but I may have just been “influenced” by other poetry and am not really original. It messes me at times and I feel like a fraud. Luckily, I never made a career at it and it was the last poetry I wrote. (I’m told it wasn’t a rip off, but I don’t think I can prove that to anyone reading this)
So yeah, I wonder if we’re in a bit of a burnt-out period and originality is rare.
I think poetry as an art form (as well as other art forms) is inherently influenced by what we read or see in other things; there are poems that are considered to be classics (I’m thinking here of TS Eliot’s The Waste Land) that reference (allude to) so many other works that they could be considered unoriginal. I’m not here to say that your opinion of your work is wrong, just that the combining and recombining of elements that might be found in other works is in my opinion what makes art work (whether in terms of personal relatability, or social commentary, or anything else). I suppose that makes art relational both from the point of view of the artist as well as from the point of view of the viewer/reader, although those perspectives can be (and usually are) wildly different
I like to imagine that Plagiarism Today is a trade publication for plagiarists
To find out that Roughest Drafts is also a Little Joel enjoyer is a brilliant and happy surprise
I actually personally know Aliza & her (adopted) sister, went to high school with her. She was pretty private. I know few will believe me. Also, Grace is not her actual last name, her family refers to her as Gracie so this is probably why she chose that last name.
Hard to believe I'd never heard of commonplace books before!
Someday I aspire to having my poems stolen like this.
Can you link Joel’s video in the description?
18:40 it's kind of confusing that you put Graham Nunn's name over Lawrence's picture
I adored your video about Shel Silverstein, and this video is no different. If you are not familiar, Savannah Brown in her video, "I could write my magnum opus, or just go to bed" talks about how certain passages in books and poetry she's read moves her, and that-to me-is an important thing to note, being that writing and poetry is not just about sharing ideas, but emotions. I'm arguing a little on the philosophical, here, and I'll fashion any excuse to mention Savannah Brown (her work inspires me), but I think hbomberguy also mentioned this philosophical, emotional argument by saying in his plagiarism video that experiencing a CZcams video without a soul showed that many creators put their soul into their work. Theft of that doesn't seem like a moral quandry in the year of our swoleness 2024, and I'm probably arguing the moral side too much, but I am too fond of the people who inspire me to create to leave these thoughts unspoken. Anyway, love your work.❤
Maybe it's just me, but listing out the greatest English poets, and showing their plagiarism, only makes plagiarism more appealing
Honestly the section pointing out plagiarism among great authors makes me care less about the incorporation of other's texts into your own, not outraged against the greats.
Great video! Little correction: at 6:39, you say Petrarch when you mean Plutarch xx
- "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.
I'm not sure why anyone would be surprised that a "poet" would sink to the low of plagiarism on a platform as largely devoid of legitimate artistry as TikTok.
You could also do something about Handel’s wholesale theft of music.
Theres also a small(?) problem that many artists, writers, poets etc get no recognition which makes it easier for thieves with a foot in the door to get away with it. Since a lot of the time the average reader might not notice. I think if people had a higher chance of being heard on any level than plagiarists wouldnt be so cocky to steal with such ease.
I think that the current discussion of plagiarism could be helped by considering some of the more affirmative takes on plagiarism such as that by the situationism. Both by becoming cognizant of how plagiarism is a feature of the current social media, encouraged by the need to stay relevant and constantly push out “content”, but also to avoid the pitfalls of a discourse on plagiarism that is deeply mired int intellectual property rights
very good video thank you
The Ern Malley story is fascinating
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.
24:57 - my favorite part
> the year of Our Lord 2024
> TikTok "poetry"
> two lines of text
> literally unable to do this without plagiarizing
That's it, pack it up, call the Nobel committee, send home all the scientists, we've done it, we have finally engineered the human attention span down to the Planck duration
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!
Did you reupload this because déjà vu
You pronounced a couple of the words correctly. That's kinda cool.
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.
grerat video, but some of the editing is a little weird. For example, the man whose picture is at 18:42 is very much not Graham Nunn, but his photo is on screen when you first mention Nunn, and Nunn's name appears under his photo in a caption.
Great vid
I think you said Petrarch, the sonnet Italian, confused with Plutarch, the historian from…Rome?
At this point I'm scared to put my poetry out there but at least I know it's original
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.
That stuff at the beginning about the Renaissance has me wondering how much of our modern criteria for plagiarism is shaped by copyright and intellectual property law. It wasn't theft when someone else said or made it first (though it was always lazy and uninspired). It was theft when someone else _owned_ it first.
There's a lot of (especially young) people who don't seem to understand why plagiarism is a big deal, and maybe this is part of the reason. A lot of it is caught up in our bullshit profit-driven culture. And while they (rightfully) sneer at that aspect, they miss that plagiarizing makes you a liar and a loser.
The real bombshell this video hit me with was that Joel's name isn't Joel.
That any of this could be considered poetry is beyond me. That anyone could consider them poets is beyond mankind.
0:50 Oooh, that's my comment! =D
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???? ???
Seneca the elder was speaking facts
“Whatever is said well is mine.” - me
Has anyone done a wellness check on Coleridge?
What is this "scaffolding" excuse? What person with a single original idea in their head has ever done this? I would sooner believe the claim that they did it by accident, writing the same words in the same order by pure coincidence.
Thanks
Here lay Aliza Gray
Who sought to tell a lie a day
Could not keep those lies at bay
& killed with a pen
The tragedy planned
Did not understand
What you outwardly yearn
Comes from within
Yesss
not forst
I can't believe HBomberguy and Big Joel plagiarized Shakespeare!
24:26 fantastic wit
Lol didnt expect so many aussie poets to come up in this video.
HIS NAME IS HENRY??
Man, I clicked on this cause I genuinely thought it was a big joel video haha
I clicked because I thought big Joel was in trouble
Seems inappropriate to apply the label of plagiarism to romantic poets for whom the concept as we understand it today just did not exist.
i really don't have sympathy for people who blatantly plagiarize.
As someone who draws I feel that its similar to tracing another persons work. If you want to use tracing/copying for your own personal study that's fine, as long as you don't post or share it and claim it as your own original work!! creative people take the time to hone their craft, to me these people (particularly the modern poets) don't feel the need to put in the effort into developing their own styles of writing and come up with their own original work
There once was a man from cantucket
unexpected Robert Evans