My teacher Willis Barnstone kept mentioning and exhibiting that Cavafy in translation. In order for an actual intertextual relationship to appear advantageously, both items should be easily available in a permanent form like a book. (If B writes an officially unpublished poem about shoelaces and A does something parallel yet mocking about shoehorns and runs with it, it’s very close to a steal—though, depending on B’s verve, it could be either an homage or nearly simultaneous creation, and only the Good Lord knows which.)
Once I sent what I thought was a nice little thing to a venue I will call The Freckled Vegetable. It was rejected, but promptly a variant by one of the Vegetable’s stable of tame poets appeared. I suppose it was meant as an homage...
Anyway, I’d use “To Bee or Not to Bee” any day of the week if it was apt.
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