Hannah Arendt

For the 1967 volume of her Complete Poems, Marianne Moore preceded the section devoted to endnotes with a statement about quotation and intellectual property. "A Note on the Notes" reads as follows: "A willingness to satisfy contradictory objections to one's manner of writing might turn one's work into a donkey that finally finds itself being carried by its masters, since some readers suggest that quotation-marks are disruptive of pleasant progress; others, that notes to what should be complete are a pedantry or evidence of an insufficiently realized task. But since in anything I have written there have been lines in which the chief interest is borrowed, and I have not yet been able to outgrow this hybrid method of composition, acknowledgements seem only honest. Perhaps those who are annoyed by provisos, detainments, and postscripts could be persuaded to take probity on faith and disregard the notes." In this project I hope to parse this statement, look at the history of "Poetry" and "The Octopus" to see how quotations operate and change across versions, and ask whether and why modern American poets like Moore who quote borrow or steal.

Understahl, Jennifer.  "Copyright Infringement and Poetry: When is a Red Wheelbarrow the Red Wheelbarrow?"  Vanderbilt Law Review
        58.3 (2005): 915-54.

        Understahl observes that courts apply a substantial similarity test when determining whether a particular work of literature infringes existing copyright.  She argues that courts fail to take into account the difference between different literary genres, and subsequently that different genres call for varying thresholds of originality.  Moreover, courts lack a clear standard for establishing substantial similarity, disagreeing on the application of the "pattern" and "total concept and feel" tests, as well as on whether the burden of recognizable infringement should fall to the "lay observer" or to an "intended audience."  The various expressive works encompassed by the umbrella term "literature" thus merit the formulation of individual standards for establishing substantial similarity.  For instance, literature often features phrases in which the sound complements the sense.  The sounds created by juxtaposing certain words can carry significance, as when a phrase describing Satan contains an abundance of sibilants, evoking the hiss of the serpent frequently employed to depict Satan in illustrations.  If the same phrase occurs in an op-ed column about a celebrity, the context largely determines that readers will attend to the sense, and assume that effects of sound are incidental. 

        In essence, Understahl argues that the idea/expression dichotomy collapses in the case of literary.  Adopting Pound's dictum that poetry is "the most concentrated form of verbal expression, she suggests that poetry warrants the lowest minimal standard for originality.  Typographical decisions, most notably features like the placement of the poem on the page, line length, enjambment, spacing, and strophic organization, all create substantial dissimilarities between copyrighted text and "new" writing, when justified as integral to that which the poem is designed to express.  Moreover, poems that borrow language from this "new" writing but cast the language in a new form ought to be determined original.  The substantial similarity test, Understahl argues, would even fail to find William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow" copyrightable.  She proposes an "expressive elements" test that evaluates the relation between form and content on a sliding scale of substantial similarity, one that accounts for the features that characterize poetic expression.  The projected benefits are greater consistency in substantial similarity determinations and less overprotection.  Moore's poetry would benefit from the adoption of this test, given the prevalence of sampling and quotation.  Understahl draws on a surprisingly wide range of poets to substantiate her remarks about poetry as an art form, demonstrating the viability of the proposed test within the artistic community under consideration.  Because she mentions no cases in which the court slighted poetic originality, the issues seem prospective, if no less important.

Abstract
At the digital poetry conference in 2002 at the University of Iowa, Kenneth Goldsmith presented the aforementioned paper regarding the vision and history of UBUWeb to the present date. He also talked about the process and adventure these avant-garde files and work proceed once they have been digitized, stripped bare, and copied or reworked in new fashions. He even mentions the avant-garde’s fortunate journey into popular culture with rock band Sonic Youth’s 1999 release Goodbye to the Twentieth Century.  Goldsmith begins his talk sharing his favorite email from Meredith who wrote: : “i really enjoyed your site. it made me think about different cultures other than the ones i experience daily living in a small Texas town”. Goldsmith then went to ruminate on the rich fulfillment he received by noting that Meredith’s note,

succinctly summed up everything that I had wished to achieve with UbuWeb: that of a distribution point for out of print, hard-to-find, small run, obscure materials, available at no cost from any point on the globe. Although the technologies of the web are continually developing in terms of sophistication, UbuWeb embraces the distributive possibilities inherent in the web's original technologies: call it radical forms of distribution.

This radical form of distribution is UBU web’s calling card. UbUWeb was launched in November of 1996, and quickly has become a “clearing house of the avant-garde art on the web”. UBUWeb is comprised of the most comprehensive archive of sound and concrete poetry on the web, but also offers an extensive amount of avant-garde film, and recordings from a plethora of avant-garde artists from Samuel Beckett to Marcel Duchamp. It’s humble beginnings began with Kenneth’s own impressive collection of sound and concrete poetry, and from day one he has desired to stay committed to making these resources “available and free” to all. UBUWeb is in existence to keep the avant-garde contemporary with culture with its accessibility on the web.

Relevance
I first came across UBUWeb about two years ago, and since I have had to limit my time spent on the site if I desire to be any kind of productive student/ human being outside of my poetic and artistic interests. It is easy to become lost, like a toddler in Toys ‘R’ US, on UBUWeb. Its clean, and manageable interface gets deeper and deeper in the plethora of seemingly endless works. It is true that many of the works posted on UBUWeb cannot be found in your local library (even University library), and its accessibility is something to fight for and cherish. The ability to preserve and offer such a vast and free library is what excites me most about the web. This “radical form of distribution” is not only fascinating to me, but something I have come to believe is necessary for the education and preservation of culture. Many of the works found on the site are frozen due to the CTEA (Copyright Term Extension Act), meaning they are not scheduled to enter the public domain at the earliest until 2019. Kenneth’s defiance in his conduct of posting the content and eschewing the normal means of being granted permission for most works, is of interest to my research of copyright law, and how UBUWeb is an example of artistic culture  that can be preserved for the good of the general public without harmful exploitation to the copyright holder. The “utopoian-cyber landscape” of UbuWeb is of particular interest, because I argue it is a beacon of the good that comes from media archiving and any laws that could hinder or impede upon this construction are detrimental to the public good.

Compiliation of scholarly essays on modern American poets.

PennSound is an ongoing project, committed to producing new audio recordings and preserving existing audio archives. PennSound is a project of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing.

Excerpt from the wonderful poem read at the 2006 Women of Color lunch

The copyright law in verse.

"LOVE IS THE DISTANCE

BETWEEN YOU AND WHAT YOU LOVE"

Reznik, Semyon. "Book's Life". pg. E5. The Washington Times. January 8th, 1990. LexisNexis. http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=542fbcc5c98b13c35001bacfa22e0132&_docnum=97&wchp=dGLbVzz-zSkVA&_md5=5efdc374d9ac37c253a0955d8d8fb96f

 

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    Semyon Reznik has written an extremely interesting book review in the The Washington Times about the Russian poet, Joseph Brodsky. I was fortunate enough to stumble across this article, which ties together a number of Russian writers who had been brutally suppressed during the rule of the Communist regime. Reznik's article sheds light on the difficulty that artists faced when writing individualistic works that praised man for his splendor and beauty. Boris Pasternak, author of the book, Doctor Zhivago, is one of the writers whom Reznik comments on, and is one of a handful of Russian men who have won the Nobel Prize for literature. However, Reznik says that these men garnered fame at a costly price. Many were harassed by the Soviet government and branded as national traitors. Under communist rule, art was supposed to reflect the beauty of the collective effort. Any works that geared away from this theme were looked down upon as "heretical". Reznik writes, "the fates of these five Nobel laureates provide a vivid illustration of how talented authors fare under a totalitarian regime. Anything created through one's own inspiration rather than dictated by the authorities is considered dangerous." ("Book Life", pg. 1). Reznik accurately portrays the hardships that plagued the life of such literary scholars, and his article weaves together a social context for Zhivago's character. In essence, Doctor Zhivago is very representative of this underground, artistic culture. He is a man who has been caught in the rise of a new form of Russian government, communism, and is unable to freely publish his works as a result. Some of the film's minor details become clearer after understanding this artistic suppression. For example, Yevgraf, Zhivago's brother, and Komarovsky frequently warn the protagonist that his poetry is viewed as subversive by the new government. He is in constant danger of upsetting the authorities, and this is one of the reasons he is forced to live out the rest of his days in an exile of sorts. David Lean portrays Zhivago as a man who is continually fleeing from the government in order to ensure the safety of his family. Even the ending becomes clear after reading Reznik's article. Doctor Zhivago separates himself from Lara in order to protect her and their unborn child. His poetry is a danger to them both. However, "Book Life" has also allowed me to see how self-reflexive Doctor Zhivago really is. It is the story of a man with great literary aspirations, which are kept quiet under the rule of the Reds. But this story also reflects its author's situation. It is important to remember that Boris Pasternak was also a writer who's greatest work, Doctor Zhivago, was branded as "subversive" by the government. In fact, Pasternak was initially forced to publish the work outside of Russia, and it would be years until the ban on his masterpiece would be lifted. Therefore, the novel is truly a story within a story. Boris Pasternak, a suppressed artist under communist rule, wrote a story [Doctor Zhivago] about another suppressed artist, Yuri Zhivago, in the same situation.

"This British site offers audio files of "English-language poets reading their own work. Some are historic recordings, some have been made specially for the Archive." Browse by poet or name of poem. Includes videos of interviews with selected poets, lesson plans, access to the "Children's Poetry Archive," and links to poetry sites for students and to other material." (via LII)

This is an essay found in the book "Gamers," it addresses the use of language and language manipulation in gaming.