Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.quux.org!news.nk.ca!rocksolid2!i2pn2.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail 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 Organization: novaBBS Message-ID: <4f24b970c013508bb830bf4f79fcb0c7@www.novabbs.com> References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: i2pn2.org; logging-data="3655262"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@i2pn2.org"; posting-account="Vf9CM7g99yqfGvzEHTw0bhrjcIfvzYBBhUuRma0rLuQ"; User-Agent: Rocksolid Light X-Rslight-Posting-User: acd0b3e3614eaa6f47211734e4cbca3bfd42bebc X-Rslight-Site: $2y$10$gC4Kk3NNzyUYCcJO5M5fxed6D4SScJVoyPPEOGG5MJxtZ6RbE9Gmy X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 4.0.0 Bytes: 7243 Lines: 127 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.