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Just thought I'd pass this along for whatever it's worth. A ways down this article about Britney Spears' copyright case is a reference to something called a "poor man's copyright". Apparently it's next to worthless for copyright infringement, but I bet it might come in handy for a plagiarism case - to prove how long ago you wrote your thingie. Anyway, here it is:
http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/..._id=1001476156 --------- Bugsy [This message has been edited by Lightning Bug (edited November 11, 2005).] |
Well, emails would be chancy anyway. The only real poor persons' copyright, far as I know, is the old reliable sealed envelope, mailed to yourself (the artist/author) by registered mail.
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That is very popular here in Nashville. You can even tell the clerk at the post office that you're doing a "poor man's copyright" and they'll postmark your envelope by hand and give it back to you. So you don't have to wait for it to be delivered.
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Don't know why it has to be certified mail, but I've mailed myself a copy of the first draft of every poem I've written in the last 10 years or so. I note the name of the poem on the outside for reference and file the sealed and postmarked envelope away in case anybody ever wants to sue me over ownership of one of my own poems.
Another trick I've heard is admissible in court and which applies to exposure from workshopping (especially if you've posted before the ink is dry) is to take a picture of your poem on the screen when you first post it. Hover your cursor over the time so that the date shows, and use the Print Screen key for taking the picture. Then paste the graphic into a new document in Word or whatever word processor you use. It saves the screen as a graphic that can't be edited, complete with date and time of posting and of taking the picture. I try to remember to do that when I post a new poem on the internet. It doesn't establish when you actually wrote the poem, but unless you've showed it to others before posting it, a plagiarist shouldn't be able to document a prior date. Carol |
Good heavens.
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Well, that article seems to suggest that "poor man's copyright" is pretty useless. This article ought to reinforce that idea:
http://www.snopes.com/legal/postmark.asp ------------------ Steve Schroeder |
Interesting thread.
I never worried about copyright, because I never regarded my poetry as having any financial value. Sonnet Central has a useful archive, and most of what I've written is there, though really for back-up purposes not copyright protection. I was contacted by a teacher once, because one of her pupils had plagiarised my work and he was adamant it was his. (It was my "Father of the Man" poem, an unusual choice for a teenager.) She declined to tell me whether she'd given it an A grade, which was my primary concern. Best regards, David |
No poem has any financial value. It's the glory, David, it's the glory. How would you like it if the little perisher won the Nemerov with Father of the Man?
Carol |
Stephen,
My understanding is that the PMC, would NOT be of any value in a copyright infringement suit. But, I think a writer could still sue for plagiarism, and collect monetary and punitive damages. But, first you must be able to prove that you wrote the thing before the other guy, at the very least. --------- Bugsy [This message has been edited by Lightning Bug (edited November 11, 2005).] |
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Do you really think that is true, no financial value? I'd rather the statement be, Most poems have no financial value. You can make money with a poem. All you have to do is write something on the level with Stopping by Woods... or Paradise Lost or some others. TJ |
Tom, sorry, but get real here. Of course any poem in anyone's slim volume, provided it isn't a vanity press publication, has some monetary value (though in most cases I wouldn't to attempt to measure it without a scanning electron microscope), and once in an ultramarine moon you’ll come across a contender for the Top 50 in the nation's poetry charts, though even in those rare cases I suspect the returns would be miniscule compared to, say, those on a modestly-selling novel. The majority of poets with books out by 'big' poetry publishers like Faber, and numerous poems in mags, journals etc. would be dwarfed financially by floor-workers in MacDonald's IF they depended on poetry publishing for a living. But they don't of course. While there is next-to-zero money in poetry, it is possible to make a not-unreasonable living through related activities like lecturing, workshop facilitation, occasional residencies etc. And the ultra popular (the lucky ****ers who have agents) can charge heart-lifting fees, plus expenses, for winging around the world to well-attended, half-hour readings. As Auden wrote: "God bless the USA, so large, / So friendly and so rich." Still, even those blessed few are probably not quite in the league of the novelist with decent returns, Larkin's "shit in his shuttered château".
[This message has been edited by Mark Granier (edited November 11, 2005).] |
Tom, I absolutely mean it. What percentage of poets gets paid to read? Or gets paid anything more than a couple of copies of the journal for a poem publication? Or gets royalties on a book? Or wins a significant cash prize for a poem? Less than .0001, I'd venture. There are millions of poets or would-be poets. Now consider the cost of the submissions and postage and envelopes and subscriptions and conferences and printer paper and chapbooks and latte shelled out by the poets who actively hope to see their names in print. Poets are in it first and foremost for the ego, to put it bluntly, even those who don't show their work to anyone else. Those who work in a related field, teaching or critiquing, may have to publish or perish, but presumably they'd be working for a living in any case. And of course we do all love to write, but doesn't that have ego written all over it? If it were simply a love of words that motivated us, we could read the many wonderful poems already out there. Poetry doesn't pay; it costs.
As Clayton Delaney said about the guitar, "Ain't no money in it. It'll lead you to an early grave." Carol |
Hey! OOOOOOOOOOOOOO! What a bunch of negative statements! I thought I was the negative one around here with my terrible narrow-minded crits! There are a number of poets making good money right now, some worthy and some not so worthy. Poetry is really big right now, and has huge potential. Years ago, I think in the first year I was on ablemuse, 2001, I said I write for the money. Somebody said I was joking. No I wasn't. I'm leaving it there for now. Of course .00001 make any money at all. That's the fun of it, the challenge. I say money is the language of humans, not words. Royalties, book readings, are only two of many ways to do well with poetry. Prose/novels make much more money because they usually have something to say or tell a story--99.99999% of poetry today is all navel-gazing, self-centered junk, and that is one reason it doesn't sell well--a lot of it offers nothing. Teaching is another way, but I think teaching is one of the three things a poet should never do. TJ [This message has been edited by Tom Jardine (edited November 11, 2005).] |
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[This message has been edited by Mark Granier (edited November 11, 2005).] |
I guess to an incurable romantic my statements may seem negative, but I am a realist, living proof that left-brained poets exist. If my words don't burst your bubble, something else will get it sooner or later. But that can be considered a negative statement only if you believe in the intransience of bubbles. If you accept them for what they are you can blow as many as you want to and enjoy them without needing or expecting them to last forever. I write poetry for the personal (read ego) satisfaction that's in it, and won't consider myself a failure if I never clear a dime from it.
Carol |
I would wager that most poetry-AS-poetry is not going to be a windfall for the poet. But, I am familiar with a few poems that have been tunificated and put on albums of popular music(none of the ones I am personally aware of are of the hit variety). But I would think all the songs, on an album, would get equal royalties.
There might be some money in that - at least that's why I keep "Intercourse Pajamas" in the safe inside a safe. --------- Bugsy |
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What a flipping facile post that was: the whole thing. Who gives a flying fuck about money, if you want money get a job. If you want to "publish novels and get rich" you have to be crass, like Stephen King or any other person whose books have gold lettering on the front. If you're crass you'll write crass poetry and that won't interest the people who like poetry. However, it might interest the people who like to buy cookbooks in supermarkets, so you might get rich. KEB [This message has been edited by Katy Evans-Bush (edited November 11, 2005).] |
Carol, does the following seem to you like the language of a romantic?
"There are a number of poets making good money right now..." "Poetry is really big right now, and has huge potential." "Years ago... I said I write for the money. Somebody said I was joking. No I wasn't." "I say money is the language of humans, not words." "...99.99999% of poetry today is all navel-gazing, self-centered junk, and that is one reason it doesn't sell well--a lot of it offers nothing." Sounds to me far more like a sales pitch for a business scheme, or the intro to a book titled 'How To Make Your First Million And Influence People'. [This message has been edited by Mark Granier (edited November 11, 2005).] |
Katy, I'm thinking it isn't the fact of making money on writing that ruins the writing so much as the sell-out that follows; writing suffers when the sale becomes more important than the craft, always a risk when you have a publishing contract to fulfill or a reputation to live up to. But if somebody wants to pay me for doing what I was going to do anyway, hey, I'll take it.
Carol |
"Money is a kind of poetry." (Wallace Stevens )
Not the reverse, unfortunately. |
Ahhhhhh, now, Wallace STEVENS - but was he talking about his day job, and not poetry (which I believe Tom Jardine to have been talking about)?
Also, bear in mind that this is a man who, arriving off the train from Hartford to Philadelphia to attend a meeting with some insurance colleagues, declined the cab offered, walked to their offices, and when he arrived was carrying a large bag of doughnuts for the assembled company. And indeed, consider also: A High-Toned Old Christian Woman Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame. Take the moral law and make a nave of it And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus, The conscience is converted into palms, Like windy citherns hankering for hymns. We agree in principle. That's clear. But take The opposing law and make a peristyle, And from the peristyle project a masque Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness, Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last, Is equally converted into palms, Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm, Madame, we are where we began. Allow, Therefore, that in the planetary scene Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed, Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade, Proud of such novelities of the sublime, Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk, May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres. This will make widows wince. But fictive things Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince. (Wallace Stevens) |
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Apart from that, Katy, I'm with you all the way in that last post. Ah, and thanks for the Stevens, which I don't understand fully, but whose language I trust instinctively and absolutely. [This message has been edited by Mark Granier (edited November 11, 2005).] |
I agree with Mark on SK. He is certainly no stylist but there's no doubt he has a powerful, if warped, imagination. And he's never set out to cater for mass-tastes. He clearly writes what he feels compelled to write.
And yes, Katy, I agree. Stevens is an obvious example of someone who hardly made a penny out of poetry (and didn't need to). In fact, when you read his letters and see the expensive private editions he ordered to be made for himself and friends, poetry was a costly outlay, rather than a source of income. Gregory |
Actually the only book I've ever read by Stephen King is his "On Writing." It's a really interesting book & I'd recommend it. He's a wonderful teacher, I think; I thinkt he book grew out of the classroom.
He IS in fact a stylist. It's just that it's a certain style! It's fascinating where he describes "& then I had to make this or that decision: what would happen in a situation like this?" and invariable makes the OPPOSITE structural decision to what I'd have made. He seems to go for blocking off avenues of subtlety, he likes things cut & dried. I guess that's how you build up suspense. (Of course the tragedy of art, the reason nothing can ever come out the way it was in your head, because every time you solve a technical problem or even have a character say something, you are blocking off all the other potentials (life & Art both finite).) Any piece of writing or any other created object can only be itself: it can't be everything. Well, this is off the track slightly. I just wanted to say that although he is a crass man, I think King is a stylist. KEB |
Well, Katy, no more off the track than the last fifteen posts. So let me chime in to say that I think Stephen King is a serious writer. He is true to the tradition of Lovecraft, Poe, Conan Doyle et al., and he writes convincingly of his method in books like 'On Writing'. He is poetical, innovative, versatile and psychologically astute. At times he delivers some excellent social satire. His short stories are where he shines, the longer works being unashamedly commercial ventures, and I will readily admit that these have many faults. He IS extremely verbose at times, and this, along with his enormous production, clouds his talent for many readers. Although he always has a smattering of unusual phrases, he DOES use clichés with happy abandon. And all too often he works to a formula with a happy ending and has difficulty maintaining suspense in the last few miles home.
But I suspect some people of not actually having READ King's work, judging him a) from films they've seen, and b) from the negative criticism he has received in academic circles, which one suspects is more a negative reaction to the huge sales figures than any reflection of the quality of his work. One can be a serious writer AND a commercial writer. Most serious writers have to be commercial, but many find it difficult. Should we prefer Herman Melville to Stephen King just because Melville was unable to win popular success? Seems potty to me. Talking of potty and while I'm here - Tom - I don't know what your idea of a teacher is, but when I teach literature I am first and foremost a student of literature. Why is studying literature bad for a writer? Duncan |
Katy, I've read SK's book on writing, and yes, its lessons are salutary; I think it was that book that alerted me to Strunk & White's marvellous little handbook, THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE. I guess you could call SK a stylist (Norman Mailer thought that his style had improved); my point was that his strength is as a storyteller, in the ghost/horror genre, which I happen to have a fondness for. THE SHINING is a great ghost story, better, in its own way, than Kubrick's film. I don't know if SK is a crass man as I've never met him, but he sounds like an ok bloke to me, pretty down-to-earth, the sort of guy it would be fun to go drinking with, if he still drinks. But, of course, I've never met him so I can't really know.
Duncan, I agree with most of what you've said. One of SK's least verbose (and most refreshingly short) novels is THE GIRL WHO LOVED TOM GORDON, a simple tale about a young girl getting lost in the woods. Very spooky though not necessarily supernatural, it is, as I remember it, narrated largely in the girl's 'voice' It has one of the best opening lines I've come across: "The world has teeth and it can bite you with them any time it wants." [This message has been edited by Mark Granier (edited November 12, 2005).] |
SK's "Misery" is a fine book, both funny and frightening, and of particular interest to writers.
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Mark, I think he's a creepy character. There's something troubling about him - a coldness. It's like he's not quite tuned in to other people. But then that can be said of so many people...
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My memory is rather vague on the subject, but I believe that a "poor man's copyright" was instrumental in the plot of Saul Bellow's "Humboldt's Gift."
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"Copyright" does relate mostly to money, in some fashion, that is why it exists. Duncan, Talking of potty and while I'm here - Tom - I don't know what your idea of a teacher is, but when I teach literature I am first and foremost a student of literature. Why is studying literature bad for a writer? I think teaching is inefficient, in a pragamatic manner, to any person's art in poetry. The rate of return, time for money, is backward. The equation is "time equals art" and anything else is spinning in place. Not to speak of institutions strangling freedom. Duncan, the a = b = c argument doesn't work here: we are all forever students. Mark, I see the scepticism, but poetry is big right now; an example of this, to use a poor example structured on an "if" is that if orginal manuscripts of Shakespeare were found and put on display in a museum, it would be very popular with very long lines. Most poetry is simply bad stuff, and that has created a poor-selling attitude. Not long ago, there was a thread here about a poet getting $8,000 a reading, probably far more than any royalties recieved. So somebody asks these poets to appear at their Universities, because it is important. Abstract free-versing navel-gazers have taken over the scene, and no doubt it will get worse before it gets better because PC demands that everyone/anyone can be/is a "poet." Why? It is what the writers programs have to 'sell.' And THAT is one reason poets should not teach. Conferencing, maybe, association, sure, but teaching is risky. Both Frost and Auden said so themselves, and both were associated with academia, but they said it on the sly. You see, how quickly poets can be bought. The "publish or perish" idea should be "sell books or perish." Poetry is not a craft. Pottery is a craft. TJ |
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There's a commercial market for verse. There's not one (substantial) for literary works of poetry. Please don't confuse the two. I don't consider having verses in a Hallmark card as being 'published', anymore than I consider those vereses to be 'poetry'. I also have no objection to someone writing Hallmark verse and getting paid for it. |
Jerry,
We might not be in disagreement. Sure, there is a craft to poetry, however, the craft alone does not make a poem. Isn't there something more that affects a reader? I see lots of poems with lots of craft and no substance. There is a commercial market for literary poetry--but there isn't much good poetry out there. Poetry has gotten into a total subjective realm that nothing makes any difference. The bar keeps getting lower. But still, there are a couple really good ones out there, and I am hoping they are able to come around to greater markets, so to speak. Mark, Another thing I have to say about teaching is something I have noted over time. I know of about 10 poets who were adamant about poetry and art when young, and then they got teaching jobs, and not much was ever heard from them again. This may have to do with the fact that many creative people sort of burn out after age 40, I don't know. TJ [This message has been edited by Tom Jardine (edited November 13, 2005).] |
Tom, you wrote:
‘I think teaching is inefficient, in a pragmatic manner, to any person's art in poetry. The rate of return, time for money, is backward. The equation is "time equals art" and anything else is spinning in place. Not to speak of institutions strangling freedom. Duncan, the a = b = c argument doesn't work here: we are all forever students.’ You are blind to the fact that teaching isn’t only about earning money. Time = more than money if you are doing something worthwhile with that time. I can see your idea of teaching is very negative if you see teaching institutions as ‘strangling freedom’. Anything can strangle freedom if you let it. You also write: ‘Another thing I have to say about teaching is something I have noted over time. I know of about 10 poets who were adamant about poetry and art when young, and then they got teaching jobs, and not much was ever heard from them again.’ Well this applies to many other professions. I know of several poets who became journalists and who stopped writing poetry almost immediately. Poetry, art and music are attractive to many young people, but impractical when they settle on a career. That’s life. But it’s not teaching as such that stops them practising it. Without the teaching of poetry there would be NO ONE practising it. But perhaps your idea is that we should stop teaching poetry so that no one writes it, seeing as how what poets write is so awful. Duncan |
"Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art."
Tom, this line from a character in Tom Stoppard's play Artist Descending a Staircase may be a little sweeping, but it is a fact that, while a craftsman doesn't need to be an artist, every artist has also to be a craftsman. Gregory [This message has been edited by Gregory Dowling (edited November 14, 2005).] |
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[This message has been edited by Mark Granier (edited November 14, 2005).] |
Hi Katy. I don't see any coldness in SK, not in any interviews I've read or the few times I've heard/seen him talking, but, as I say, I don't know the man.
But I am often surprised at people's very different impressions. I remember on The Poem website somone rather cavalierly delclaring that Heaney was the kind of person she'd avoid at parties. Whereas the few, brief, times I've met Heaney he has struck me as the kind of person it would always be a pleasure to meet: charming, generous and humourously down to earth. Your impressions of SK of course are another matter. You may well be right. I wouldn't doubt your perspicacity. But, from my limited knowledge anyway, he seem like a nice enough guy. [This message has been edited by Mark Granier (edited November 14, 2005).] |
Aw, and I could also be wrong!
I'm sure you're right about Heaney - even in his pictures you can tell he's a born mixer, and his poems bear that out. There's a lot of warmth there. Oh and in response to the quote below... Quote:
Gregory you are, as so often, correctamundo. I have a very high opinion of crafts - many of them are very hard to do well - and many of them do segue into art. All arts contain a craft element, as in "knowing how to do it" or even "knowing how to do it well". This is expressed in the adage, "A poor craftsman blames his tools". I guess the poor artist these days says "I'm too good for tools"! KEB [This message has been edited by Katy Evans-Bush (edited November 14, 2005).] |
Duncan, Poetry, art and music are attractive to many young people, but impractical when they settle on a career. How true. And the career often relates to the dreams and goals of a spouse. Frost said that a poet should not marry until late, and I took that to heart. Of course, it didn't do me much good, 35 years old at the time and living in a ramshackle house without central heat for 10 years. Teaching addresses the craft of poetry, not the poet in a person. Gregory, ...a craftsman doesn't need to be an artist, every artist has also to be a craftsman. I agree. I just rather hear, "the poets's art" rather than "the poet's craft." Sounds better. Mark, And there are many other poets who did write a lot while working their careers but their craft/art does not grow or change or develop yet they still publish again and again. They become administers or essayists as well. I have often said that the main thing for a poet to do is not to work, or work as little as possible. TJ |
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Carol |
Well, I work a hell of a lot: I have three kids to support and no husband. I have a demanding job, too, not a 9-5 leave-it-behind-at-the-office job. Funny, that.
And while I'd love to have a LESS demanding job, it just wouldn't pay the same. There is that awkward issue of having to keep a roof over our heads! Plus, I agree with Carol. Less is - less. |
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