Literary Clusterfucks 2013

I myself have had my style co-opted by other students in workshops. This is not flattery — this is theft. Not nearly as egregious as spitting back words of another poet. Plagiarisers are not welcome in the writing community. #AileyOToole

— Rachael Walker (@rwalkerwrites) December 3, 2018

this take however is pretty fucking dumb

ppl can't tell if you embed tweets here can they

This is not flattery — this is theft.

urrggh. She thinks she can claim all property rights to a style?! Uh, nope. No one ever did before.

yeah. i think this kind of mistake is inevitable given the strident anti-plagiarism stance people were taking on twitter, in which true poetry was an expression of the poet's authentic voice and anything short of that is stealing. i agree that people shouldn't lift lines from other poets, but i also think all art emerges from a tradition and it's naive to imagine that any poet arrived at their voice all alone, rather than via dialogue with other poets. we live in a society and all that

I think there's a lot of space between that and biting poems from a book published in 2017

exactly

The idea that a real poet finds some kind of perfectly individual voice is one of those myths that both critics and artists love to fetishize. The greatest poets are always derivative to some degree and most achieve their individual distinction mostly upon stylistic nuances and personal themes and imagery. Non-greatest poets do exactly the same, except not as successfully.

yeah, you have to fight to be original. not everyone gets there.

We at @GhostCityPress will not tolerate plagiarism. It’s like removing the flesh & bones from an artist. It’s stealing their voice. It’s evil. In light of recent events, we have taken down Ailey O'Toole’s work.

Someone’s voice is to be celebrated, not taken away from them.

— Justin Karcher (@justin_karcher) December 1, 2018

should be asleep but i am reading more tweets about this. what does ilx think of this kind of reaction? i think it's over the top and so much response has been in this vein. again--plagiariam is bad and certainly a kind of violation--but is evil really a good word to use for someone who isn't donald trump?

the poetry world is exceedingly small and difficult to become established within, so that the idea of anyone occupying some unmerited sliver of publishing space in that crowded and miniscule world utterly infuriates the coterie of poets who've managed to carve out a tiny bit of standing room in that micro-universe.

perhaps the fact that these people are involved in 'the lit world' does not necessarily mean that they have good judgment in other, or perhaps any, respects

yeah i guess. i just think the absolutism is idiotic.

plagiarism is a bad idea and very stupid but yeah it does not rate very highly on the "evil" scale. it's not really even "criminal behavior" in the usual sense of the word; you could lose your job or a book contract for doing it, but you're probably not going to jail. (good thing too, or bob dylan would already be there.)

it seems like part of a broader trend toward flagrant self-righteousness.

and lack of self awareness.

like did that poet above, who complained about people biting her style in her poetry classes, never try on the style of other poets in the process of finding her own voice? is she an actual god capable of ex nihilo creation?

"I myself have had my style co-opted by other students in workshops."

i bet this person is a real blast to hang out with

snowflakes on a wet black bough

imago, calling out sanctimoniousness among twitter users is my thing. back the fuck off.

lollll

Uh it's one thing to steal a line or two from another poet/m, but she pretty much plagiarized the entire thing:

pic.twitter.com/5W10pIffMD

— Brenna Twohy (@brennatwohy) December 1, 2018

click through to thread.

no, for sure, i'm not saying what she did wasn't bad. it's totally cool for her work to get pulled from all these poetry sites and stuff. i just think the language about her being evil and removing flesh and bones from artists was way over the top and kind of sadistic.

it's the glee in the persecution that bothers me. and since it's a group phenomenon it disturbs me more than the existence of one plagiarizer.

I'm fine with the (apparently quite witty) vitriol of the plagiarised poets

The problem is other people chipping in, having their say

and as ever, this is the real menace

It's so fucking arrogant and selfish. I'm so sorry, Brenna. xo

— Jamie Caroline (@JamesCaroline) December 1, 2018

anyway treesh im so sorry u had to go thru this, anything u need just ask x

anyone who co-opts the style of someone who says ‘i myself’ in a tweet is a fool

yeah, though I find twitter mobs in general tend to be over the top and sadistic. plenty of women get called worse, and that's even without doing anything wrong.

xposts lol imago

Also, when someone plagiarises that much and that pathologically....idk, while they deserve some measure of contempt maybe they're the ones who on some level need the u alright huns - clearly not in a good place if that's what's being resorted to

agree with all those points

so yeah i sampled your poem you were using it wrong

This is incredible, like a student trying to evade plagiarism checkers with a thesaurus:

"Your original stanza reads, "Hell-spangled girl / spitting teeth into the sink, / I'd trace the broken / landscape of my body / & find God / within myself." . . .

— Rachel McKibbens (@RachelMcKibbens) December 1, 2018

"...My paraphrased stanza read "Ramshackle / girl spitting teeth / in the sink. I trace the / foreign topography of / my body, find God / in my skin." Unfortunately, over time, the origin of the stanza slipped my mind and in compiling my manuscript and submitting the poem"

— Rachel McKibbens (@RachelMcKibbens) December 1, 2018

i guess the most shocking aspect of this is poets responding to it with colourful rhetoric and hyperbole

mckibbens tweetstorm is p righteous tbf

o'toole def comes off as an insecure noun (definition supplied elsewhere) - 'I DID THE THING' etc. dismal but also aware of it. probably needs help rn but probably isn't getting any. not sure why j. made that suicide quip above as she's probably dissociating hardcore atm, idk. treat young people with kindness when they fuck up

Accusations of plagiarism provide one of the few opportunities to broach the subject of poetry in public discourse, no doubt because they don't require you to read any actual poetry.

will obviously never now be a poet though and needs to consider alternatives when this has all settled down

wonder which of the london scene i could plagiarise to most outrageous effect lol

as always

this is only valuable to the extent that the terrible ppl involved visibly suffer for my edification

maybe I'll plagiarise deems and cause ilx drama

you havent the stuff tbph

but you do, so

i just think the language about her being evil and removing flesh and bones from artists was way over the top and kind of sadistic.

lol poets in waxing poetic shocker

What's sadistic is a white poet stealing lines about abuse from women of color, and getting the recognition and awards they never got.

It's one of those really though things about being white, than when something bad you do inadvertently perfectly illustrate centuries of plunder and violence, that people get really really ott mad at you. It's really tough being white. And that poet got off lucky, imagine if she had been a man?

People would have been even angrier at them?

anyway, the writers she stole from seem more respected in the community than she was. it seems like she was nominated for a pushcart prize and never won anything. i think itms fucked up what she did, and i am not criticizing the poets she ripped off for their anger, but I really don’t see this as a kind of hate crime that demands she be denounced for all time and called a monster

Did she leave twitter because of this?

We should be kind to mistakes but I wouldn't immediately step in and say they people stolen from here can't write some angry tweets about it.

Yeah those people can of course vent.

But the fiercest rhetoric has come from other people chiming in, talking about how shocked they are and how dare anyone make an excuse for this because of the woman’s mental illness you are supporting white supremacy don’t you know et cetera

Like, this girl’s career as a poet is over. Let it go.

Hell is other people, remember.

Yeah. What I am seeing is a bunch of people delighting in someone else’s disgrace—trying to get their kicks in. I don’t think it’s cool.