Smooth, Not Criminal?

Most of the poetry in diluvium is my own. All of the central 8-line poems are original, and the vast majority of the lines in the surrounding ocean are either created specifically for this sequence or adapted from other poems of mine. There are, however, some exceptions that I fear may cause me trouble later on.

I quote from a huge variety of sources, anything from two to eight lines: song lyrics, poetry, computer error messages, scholarly works. At the end of the sequence, I plan to include a Waste Land style set of endnotes: On page x, the lines that begin with y come from source z. In no way, shape, or form do I wish to plagiarize, just collage.

I've recently become concerned about the different between plagiarism (which is readily solved by providing credit where credit is due) and fair use (which is concerned with protecting the use of exact words, whether or not credit is provided). That is to say, if dreams come true, and diluvium gets published, can the poets and bands I crib from come after me for using their lines without permission, in a context they didn't approve?

I'm already starting to write some of the poets, some of whom I've met and will probably be OK with the project. Some are dead, but their works are still under copyright. Some are so big (e.g., U2) that I'll never hear anything regarding permission to use the lines until there's actually a book coming out. I'm going to let large fish and dead fish (who are large by virtue of being controlled by publishers more than individuals) get fried by the publisher, whoever that is, when the time comes.

Anyone out there do a lot of collage work and/or a lot of quoting and have any advice? Am I just being paranoid, since nobody comes after poets for this kind of thing anyway? Am I just being nice, since I might not really have to (by virtue of being under the radar) but choose to tell the people I'm quoting?

Another diluvium sneak peak

I'm realizing that I don't so much mind putting samples of diluvium up here. As I learned with El Oceano y La Serpiente / The Ocean and The Serpent and The Icarus Sketches, people react quite strongly (in a good way) to the finished sequence, but very few journals are willing to touch the individual poems. Here's a draft of Noah's wife on page 19, fretting about the rut they've gotten themselves into:

The Legacy You Never Expect

So...

When I wrote El Oceano y La Serpiente / The Ocean and The Serpent, I was writing for people fifty years from now. I was trying to do something that hadn't been done and that, if it had gotten any serious press, would have caused people to redefine their conceptions of bilingual texts. Ambitious, a bit cocky, but remember that A) I was only 22-23 and B) really, you couldn't find facing, symmetrical texts in two languages that were not translations but antitheses. I've since seen something approaching that idea, but it's still unique. Any exceptions, please tell me about them.

Almost nobody knows about it.

I'm now writing diluvium, and I want it to last for at least fifty years. I definitely haven't seen anyone combine accessible and difficult and traditional and visual poetries in this way, and I'm actively searching. The closest I can get to what I'm doing visually is Lisa Jarnot's Some Other Kind of Mission, and that's straight-up difficult work.

I fear nobody will know about it.

Which brings me to a creation of mine that I devised in January 2006. A creation which still lives on in name and spirit, having spawned three or four or more message board threads containing literally thousands of posts. Not all of them directly relate to this creation, but the "old-timers" on the boards still talk of it.

I'm talking about Krede the Mighty.

In January 2006, Wizards of the Coast held a dragon-making contest. You, the readers and players, design a dragon. We'll take our x favorites and put them head to head, letting visitors to our website vote for the winner each week. Almost everybody was coming up with really complicated, high-level dragons that nonetheless didn't really spark. There was creation, but not much creativity.

So I decided to introduce a dragon who had been cursed into the form of a duck. I decided that he would always remain in character and, as per one of the grand rules of improv, always play along with what others were doing to him with one exception: he could never actually gain real "power." I determined that this was because the curse was not specifically to turn him into a duck, but to warp magic around him such that it took the most embarrassing form possible. Thus, an attempt to grow him to his normal size resulted in only his butt getting bigger (and launching a remix of Sir-Mix-A-Lot). When somebody happily played along with Krede, imprisoning him in a Forcecage, I began a series of faux-Civil-War-style missives, at which point even more players began writing to and about Krede, inventing factions and skullduggery in the upcoming contest. Someone went so far as to make an entire thread called Krede's Pond wherein the activities could be continued. Then that thread got too big, so we made Krede's Cafe. Then someone opened Krede's Tavern. Which was followed by similar threads (which invoked Krede by name). The Pond and Cafe have been lost to the recesses of the internet, I think, which is actually a pity.

All I'm saying is, it's entirely possible that more people know about Krede the Mighty than about my poetry. The later threads (from Cafe to Tavern and beyond) went hundreds of pages, with dozens of participants (myself participating less and less as others stepped up with interesting personae). There's a part of me that's really amused by that fact. There's a part of me that is telling my dissertation-writing self to just get a dayjob and write fantasy, because obviously I did something right. There's another part of me that's kind of sad. There's a part of me that realizes that Krede's postmodern sense of humor is already part of my poetry. And there's another part of me that just wants to lay the quack down on somebody.

I'll let you know when I decide.

A Neon Icarus, An Old New Date

The cover image for The Icarus Sketches / The Icarus series is now viewable at the Seven Kitchens Press blog. Instructions for pre-ordering (it hits at the end of the month) are available there as well.

Oh heck, I'll put up the image, too:



Again, this is an accordion-fold chapbook, so you can read through my poems, turn it over, and keep going with Crystal's (or vice versa), hence the double cover.

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I just rescheduled my appearance in Providence, RI. I'll be at Blue State Coffee September 1st. Check the sidebar for times and links and so forth.

OE

Anyone out there remember their Old English rules better than I do?

I'm trying to make the smallest of adjustments to Caedmon's Hymn for part of the ocean in diluvium.

It currently reads:

Nu sculon herigean heofonrices Weard,
ece Drihten, or onstealde,
heofon to hrofe, [eth]a middangeard,
abieteende

Which in contemporary English would go something like

Now we must praise heaven-kingdom's Guard,
eternal Lord, the beginning established,
heaven as roof, then middle-earth,
breaking [with implication of storms]

I'm also thinking about replacing "or onstealde" with the bit from the line below, "He aerst sceop" (He first made), which is a bit better sensewise even as it discards the alliteration.

I got Cs and Bs in my OE and Beowulf courses due to trying to create good poetry instead of laser-accurate translations, but I don't want to totally botch this one. Any help is appreciated.

Small news, Big news

Small news: Taught my first class at Hesser College in Concord last night. Structuralism as it applies to the detective story, and how structuralism might pop up in their non-literary lives as well. Good group of students. They didn't freak out at seeing how fast and far I'm going to try to take them (I believe in pushing hard and rewarding students for it).

Big news: My brother gets married on Saturday. Need to prepare best man remarks. I'll be away-from-blog, but may have photos to post when I get back. Hooray!

Revolutions, Roleplaying, Reverse-psychology

A belated Happy Independence Day to those of you celebrating it. Here's my day-after sketch, whilst thinking in the backyard about revolutions:

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A bit I'm incorporating into diluvium from the smartest role-playing game ever devised, Nobilis. Most RPGs have what's called flavor text, wherein the quantitative component of the game is expressed in more qualitative terms. For something like Dungeons & Dragons, you'd get something like: "Rekzor advanced and smote the goblin on the head with his glowing mace (critical hit with mace +1). Nobilis has flavor text like this:

Once, a man was so well-liked that he set the fields ablaze and the peasants didn't mind.

Then he killed all the animals, gave his folk dust to eat, and they didn't mind.

Then he dirtied the water with blood from his wars, and they didn't mind.

Then they tortured him slowly to death on the Stone Wheel, and when his heirs asked the peasants why, they said, "We thought he liked that sort of thing."

Or, the lines I'm putting into diluvium:

8. Lady Urvasi and Lady Iya stood at the entrance to Hell. "I am strong," said Urvasi. "I can survive the worst torments of this place."

9. Lady Iya said, "You are strong; but is that strength an asset, here?"

How often do you get a game that lets you argue serious philosophical points not as a sidebar, but as one of the primary goals of the experience? It's like a living Sandman comic.

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Lines from my spoken-word/performance piece "Zahir," which will end up on the same page as the hell bit from Nobilis:

Don't think of a tiger.
Don't picture the black and orange stripes undulating through tall grass.
Don't image the huge pads silent as the new moon, the low rumble of thunder in the lungs, the electricity in the sinews that precedes the rush and clutch, the chaotic tumble, the crunch of a dead deer's vertebrae.