It's Your Verses That We Want and Your Verses We Shall Have! Notes on Plagiarism, Piracy, and Found Poetry

 

'Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, 

and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.' [1] 

 

 

I. 

 

Coming as I do from a punk anarchist tradition [2], I'm pretty much of the view that all property - including intellectual property - is theft and that piracy is a swashbuckling method of redistributing gold and cultural capital.

 

And I have little sympathy when bourgeois poets complain about plagiarism, bleating that such an illicit compositional technique is an assault upon originality of expression and the authenticity of experience (i.e., their artistic integrity). 

 

I can see there's something slightly shameful about covert plagiarism, when an attempt is made to hide or disguise what one's doing; if you're going to steal, then do so like Willie Brodie for the sake of the danger and to liberate ideas, not merely so that you might pass off something taken as your own. 

But if you're upfront and open about what you're doing - if your plagiarism is overt and you make no secret of the fact that you located your materials here, there, and everywere - then that seems admirable to me. 

 

In fact, I'm something of a fan of so-called found poetry ...

 

 

II.

 

Found poetry is verse created by recontextualising words, lines, and even whole passages purloined from elsewhere and then making a number of crafty modifications to the text in order to give it fresh meaning or look. How and to what extent the poem is changed - or treated, as they say in the trade - is really up to the finder.    

 

In a sense, a found poem is the literary equivalent of the readymades that Duchamp and the Dadaists foisted on the art world over a century ago. I don't know if he was the first to hit on the technique, but the great American writer and artist Bern Porter famously published Found Poems with the Something Else Press in 1972 [3] and it's him that I initially think of whenever the subject comes up.   

 

 

III.

 

Having found a text to work on, there are several ways one might then begin to fuck with it, including  ...  

 

(i) Erasure

 

Poems produced by erasure have had words from an existing text redacted or blacked out, thereby producing a new work whilst at the the same time making us curious about what has been concealed.

 

Thus, whilst erasure may subvert the question of authorship, it nevertheless acknowledges (and draws attention to) an original text and perhaps raises political questions around censorship, secrecy, and the control of information. 

 

The name often associated with the technique is Doris Cross, who, in 1965, famously placed certain columns from a 1913 edition of Webster's Dictionary under erasure [4]. 

 

(ii) Patchworking

 

A cento is a poetical patchwork entirely composed of verses, passages, or simply short fragments taken from an author (or several authors), then stitched into a new body of text à la Dr. Frankenstein. 

 

It's a very old form, originating in the 3rd or 4th century (if not earlier), but it's one that is still explored and experimented with today by writers such as myself [5]. 

 

(iii) Découpé

 

This is what we call in English a cut-up technique; i.e., one that involves a lot of textual snipping and rearranging in order to create what is known as an aleatory narrative; i.e., a story that incorporates chance or randomness into its composition and/or structure. 

 

William Burroughs and his pal Brion Gysin popularized this technique in the 1950s and 1960s, although it can be traced back to the Dadaists of the 1920s (Tristan Tzara was a fan of such instant poetry). 

 

It has since been used by many scissor-wielding artists in a wide variety of contexts, though those who think that découpé might magically reveal a text's implicit content or true meaning are being ridiculous [6]. 

 

In closing, let me express my admiration for Deleuze's attempt to transform the cut-up into a rather more promiscuous (and less learned) pick-up technique. As he writes: 

 

"You should not try to find whether an idea is just or correct. You should look for a completely different idea, elsewhere, in another area, so that something passes between the two which is neither in one nor the other." 

 

Deleuze continues:  

 

"You don't have to be learned, to know or be familiar with a particular area, but to pick up this or that in areas which are very different. [...] Burroughs' cut-up is still a method of probabilities - at least linguistic ones - and not a procedure [...] which combines the heterogeneous elements" [7]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] T. S. Eliot, 'Philip Massinger', essay in The Sacred Wood, (Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1920), p. 114.

 

[2] That is to say, an anarchist tradition that owes more to Malcolm McLaren than it does to Proudhon. 

 

[3]   In 1972, Bern Porter published Found Poems via Something Else Press. It features hundreds of found poems selected from newspapers, ads and everyday printed matter, some involving collage techniques, others displayed as readymades. 

 

[4] For an interesting attempt to answer the question 'Who Is Doris Cross?' by Lynn Xu posted on the Poetry Foundation website (25 April 2014): click here. 

[5] See the post: 'My Name is Victor Frankenstein' (6 March, 2022): click here. 

[6] Burroughs was drawn towards the idea of a text being invested with unconscious meaning. He also suggested cut-ups may be effective as a form of divination: 'When you cut into the present, the future leaks out.' That seem's doubtful, although it's a nice thought. 

      I found this line from Burroughs in the 'Translator's Introduction' to Síomón Solomon's Hölderlin's Poltergeists (Peter Lang, 2020), p. 14.  

 

[7] Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (The Athlone Press, 1987), p. 10.   

My Name is Victor Frankenstein

Peter Cushing as Victor Frankenstein in  

The Curse of Frankenstein, dir. Terence Fisher, 

(Hammer Films, 1957) [1]

 

 

Although I have never read Mary Shelley's famous novel [2], I am of course familiar with the story of Victor Frankenstein and his monstrous creation [3] and, indeed, have always had an affinity for this noble and unorthodox young scientist - part thanatologist, part alchemist [4] - obsessed with generating new life from dead material.

 

For far from being the prototypical mad scientific genius, as portrayed in numerous cinematic adaptations of the novel, Frankenstein is actually a tragic figure, driven by a beautiful obsession.

 

And if, when things don't quite turn out as planned and he inadvertently endangers his own life and those of his family and friends, he comes to bitterly regret his unnatural experiments, nevertheless one has to admire him for challenging the judgement of God in the manner of a modern Prometheus.

 

But the primary reason I identify with Frankenstein - apart from his intelligence, curiosity about the world, and refusal to be bound by laws and conventions, is because I essentially use his technique as a writer. 

 

That is to say, I cut up dead bodies of text and stitch stolen ideas together in a diabolical manner. My creativity lies - if anywhere - in then being able to provide the electric spark or lightning flash of inspiration which makes the assembled piece of intertextual fiction-theory breathe with new life [5].

 

This might not make me an original [6] talent - any more than Frankenstein's work made him a god - but it does produce some interesting results, does require a certain degree of skill and hard work, and does make me, in a sense, both an artist and alchemist. 

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Readers might be interested to know that Frankenstein's first appearance on screen was in a silent short film released in 1910, dir. J. Searle Dawley, and starring Augustus Phillips as the good doctor and Charles Ogle as the Monster. 

      This was followed in 1931 by the famous Universal version of the tale, dir. James Whale, starring Colin Clive in the role of Frankenstein, opposite Boris Karloff as the Monster. Both actors reprised their roles in the 1935 sequel, Bride of Frankenstein (also dir. by James Whale).

      As much as I love Clive's portrayal, I have a particular soft spot for Peter Cushing's performance in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), opposite Christopher Lee as the Creature, which is why I've used his image here. Cushing went on to star as Frankenstein in five more films for Hammer, subtly revealing different aspects of the character in each.

 

[2] I'm referring of course to Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), written by Mary Shelley (whilst only eighteen years of age). 

 

[3] For those who aren't familiar with Shelley's figure of Victor Frankenstein, here's a brief character description and story outline:

 

According to the 1831 edition, Victor was born in Naples, but he describes his distinguished ancestry as Genevese.

      As a youth, he was intrigued by the works of famous alchemists such as Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus and longed to discover the so-called philosopher's stone; a mythical substance that could transmute base metals, such as lead, into gold and which was also an elixir of life, promising physical rejuvenation and immortality. 

      Later, however, Victor abandons alchemy for mathematics, which, he thinks, provides a more secure foundation upon which to base an understanding of the world. However, whilst at University in Bavaria, Frankenstein rediscovers his love for chemistry - this time in its modern form - and he makes a number of significant scientific discoveries; including discoveries about the bio-chemical nature of life, which enable him to animate non-living material. This research culminates in his creation of a being resembling man, but whom he comes to regard as a mixture of creature and demon.

     Rejecting the responsibility to care for his creation, the monster decides to seek revenge upon his maker; he murders Frankenstein's youngest brother, his best friend, and strangles Victor's bride, Elizabeth, on their wedding night. 

      Feeling that he has nothing left to live for, Frankenstein vows to destroy the creature and pursues the latter all the way to the North Pole, where he, Victor, eventully dies. Somewhat surprisingly, the monster is so overcome with sorrow and guilt, that he decides to commit suicide, before then disappearing into the frozen Arctic night.    

 

[4] One is tempted to also think of Victor Frankenstein as a Romatic poet, particularly as Mary's lover at the time of writing - and soon to be husband - Percy Shelley, inspired the character; for not only did the latter sometimes use the pen name of Victor, but, whilst a student at Eton, Shelley had conducted chemical experiments involving electricity. His rooms at Oxford were also filled with strange scientific equipment.  

 

 [5] It's been pointed out to me that my understanding of Frankenstein's monster as pieced together from body parts taken from numerous stolen corpses and reanimated by the use of electricity, owes more to the movies than Shelley's novel. In the latter, apparently, Frankenstein discovers the secret principle of life and it's this that allows him to painstakingly develop a method to vitalise inanimate matter, though the actual process is left rather vague. Neverthless, Frankenstein does assemble body parts, so I think my comparison stands and there's no need to split hairs, Maria.        

 

[6] Along with authenticity, originality is one of the concepts I despise the most: I don't care if my posts on Torpedo the Ark lack originality. And besides, as the Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith once wrote in The Vicar of Wakefield (1766), we can "pardon the want of originality, in consideration of the exquisite talent with which the borrowed materials are wrought up into the new form". 

      Or, as Roland Barthes would argue, the post-as-text is not expressive of an author's unique being. It's explainable only through other words drawn from a pre-given, internalised dictionary. Every new post is therefore, in some sense, already a copy of a copy of a copy whose origin is forever lost and meaning infinitely deferred. 

      To put that another way, if, as I do, you accept the idea of intertextualité, then questions of authorship and originality go out of the window and Síomón Solomon is right to claim in his brilliant study, Hölderlin's Poltergeists (2020), that every piece of writing is already a translation at some level and the author, whilst masquerading as a unified subject, is actually a multiple assemblage - like Frankenstein's monster - who speaks with many tongues (some of which are forked).