A new spate of plagiarism incidents in the poetry world has me wondering what satisfaction could possibly come from gaining recognition for a stolen poem.
I believe that it is a symptom of a darker issue at work in contemporary poetry, where we have come to value product over process, poet over poetry, prize over participation, commendation over conversation. How do we get back to the impetus that got us writing in the first place, to the reverence for the written word that makes plagiarism unthinkable?
Click here for reflections on this topic in The Huffington Post.