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From: will.dockery@gmail.com (W.Dockery)
Newsgroups: alt.arts.poetry.comments,rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: Armchair critics on plagiarism
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2025 03:13:45 +0000
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George Dance wrote:

> Armchair critics on plagiarism
>
> moved from
> https://groups.google.com/g/alt.arts.poetry.comments/c/k259WiA4gcE?hl=en
>
> On Thursday, May 11, 2023 at 3:25:15 PM UTC-4, Michael Monkey aka
> "Michael Pendragon" wrote:
>> On Sunday, February 14, 2016 at 6:34:20 PM UTC-5, Piggy Ross aka "Peter
>> J Ross" wrote:
>>> Newcomers to AAPC who are tempted to comment helpfully on the drivel
>>> Dunce has posted may like to know why they shouldn't bother.
>>>
>>> Dunce has been caught plagiarising in AAPC and RAP three times:
>>> 1. from Leonard Cohen, in the hope of winning a poetry competition
>>> 2. from me, in the hope of making a profit
>>> 3. from an unidentified translator, again in the hope of making a
>>> profit.
>>>
>>> There are many other cases in which Dunce has been suspected of
>>> plagiarising, and innumerable occasions on which he's stolen other
>>> people's work without going quite so far as to pretend to be its
>>> author.
>>>
>>> Dunce is a thieving scumbag. Don't waste your time critiquing the
>>> "poems" of which he pretends to be the author. Ignore him or flame
>>> him: either way, treat him as the thieving scumbag he is.
>>
>> Hmm... funny how old accusations keep turning up.
>
> It's not funny at all, if one looks at the headers; these old
> accusations have been turning up because 'armchair critics' MIchael
> Monkey and his big buffoon "colleague" keep digging them up from the
> archives and bumping them.
>
>> IIRC, the Leonard Cohen poem was posted, unattributed, along with the
>> question (paraphrased from memory) "What do you think of this poem?"
>> This question was addressed to a woman (possibly Karla). Here's the
>> link:
>> https://groups.google.com/g/alt.arts.poetry.comments/c/vGRK-CsjHKw/m/YXtIE_9zBgAJ?hl=en
>
> Since Michael Monkey doesn't know or has forgotten the details, here's a
> TLDR: Karla, an 'armchair critics' from those days, decided to run an
> "Imagist Free Verse challenge" to which I submitted the poem that later
> became "September Night". She declared that I should make it a haiku and
> cut out everything but the crickets going silent. I tried that, and
> discovered that the result was just a copy of Leonard Cohen's famous
> "Summer Haiku" poem (which I'd learned back in high school). So I sent
> her a copy of Cohen's poem, and asked her what she thought of that. I
> also turned my poem into a glosa of Cohen's.
>
> September Night:
> https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2010/09/september-night-george-dance.html
>
>> I thought it was an attempt to trick her into unknowingly trashing a
>> Cohen poem, thereby negating her criticism of George's poem (at least in
>> the eyes of Cohen's admirers).
>
> As usual, what Michael "thought" years later had nothing to do with the
> truth. I thought she'd recognize Cohen's poem, and realize she'd been
> advising me to turn mine into a copy of it.
>
>> George claimed that he simply wanted to get her unbiased opinion of
>> Cohen's work ("unbiased" in that knowledge of its successful author
>> would play no part in her evaluation). (Uh huh.)
>
> It might have been funny if Karla had trashed the poem (that's a joke
> that another 'armchair critic, Gary Garbage, said people used to play on
> him). But, no, Cohen's poem was recognized, and she decided to accuse me
> of plagiarism instead.
>
>> The theft from PJR was definitely real. George took PJR's poem, "Batty's
>> Hat," retitled it "Patty's Hat" (or something equally obvious), and
>> simply added colors to those PJR had listed in the original. As a joke,
>> this would have been allowable, but George went so far as to claim it
>> was now an original poem, and even named his blog after it "Patty"
>> having been replaced by "Penny"
>
> Once again, our simian 'armchair critic' has forgotten or is ignoring
> the details. Here's the link:
> https://groups.google.com/g/alt.arts.poetry.comments/c/HnVDnCi3_0c/m/6aMv5PDP-mYJ?hl=en
>
> And here's the TLDR: "Penny" began as a collaboration with poet Ray
> Henrich.. Ray had written four rewrites of Piggy Ross's Batty "poem"
> including one in which he inreased Ross's "list" of colors from one to
> three. I sent him an OB on that increasing the colors to roughly a
> dozen, and he replied with one with over 100 colors (which won
> plaudits). He and I batted our Batty project around for a few more days
> and many more colors. At this point it was still being attributed; it's
> only when we replaced "Batty" with "Betty" (suggexted by Will Dockery)
> that we decided it no longer had anything to do with Piggy's "poem" and
> took his name off. Eventually Ray got tired of the project, and gave me
> permission to use all of it and continue to add colors  By the time I'd
> reached 5,000 colors, I decided to open a blog to host it on.
> Penny, or Penny's Hat:
> https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2009_12_01_archive..html
>
>> to avoid a possible lawsuit.
>
> And no, I did not change "Betty" to "Penny because I was afraid of a
> Kooksuit from Will.)
>
>> As to the third charge, I've no recollection of it.
>
> 'Armchair critic' Piggy Ross is refererring to both my Rimbaud
> translations -
> https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/search/label/Arthur%20Rimbaud
> - and my book of Garneau translations -
> /Looking and Playing in Space/:
> https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2011_02_01_archive.html
>
> Stalking me on can.politics one day (after he'd accused me of
> plagiarizing his Batty), Piggy found a quote from me telling someone
> that I didn't speak French. So he invented a story that I couldn't read
> French, which was his "proof" that all my French translations were
> plagiarized as well.
>
>> However, based on his above record, I wouldn't be surprised if he'd
>> neglected to attribute it's translator as well.
>
> "Its", Monkey. You, your Chimp colleague, and your big buffoon
> colleague, are three peas in a pod when it comes to misusing
> apostrophes. However, since "three peas in a pod" is a cliche, a new
> metaphor looks called for. One could even go so far as to call you
> "conjoined triplets" in that respect.

Again, interesting read.