Week 3 - Brian's Poet of Note - 'Richard Wilbur Part 2'
(5) At the same time, the US was exploring space, and we were able to view the stars for the first time in space above the atmosphere. Earthbound telescopes have to look through miles of dirty air which distorts the images of stars that we see (this is why stars seem to twinkle) , so I refer to the air as an atmospheric blindfold that is burned up by spacefaring astronauts.
(6) Early landings were at sea, and on at least one landing the astronauts were taken to a waiting aircraft carrier where the cooks had baked a 300-pound 'Angel Food Cake' to welcome them home. The aircraft carrier had thousands of people on board waiting to party.
(7) Many 'religious' folk worried greatly in the late 1950s that NASA 'shooting holes in heaven' with its rockets might bring about the end of the world! I even wrote a poem about it!
(8) Space is not empty but contains millions of photons (a kind of sea) .
(9) The human eye contains both 'rods that can detect weak light' and 'cones that can detect colored light when the light is stronger.' The color disappears after dusk because the cones are not sensitive enough.
In any case, when I read my poem aloud to the class, both the Professor and all the English majors got suddenly quiet. It was the first time in my life that I had a strong sense of my potential as a future writer and a poet! I felt that all were genuinely impressed by what I had done!
Imitation: A Creative Compliment?
Well, of course, there are different kinds of imitation. A simple one would be to strike the poet's name and publish the poem as your own. But of course, if you do this often enough you will get caught eventually.
To write the same poem but change a few words, so it is not an exact copy would be another way to imitate. But in both of these cases, the intent is clearly to deceive others and where plagiarism rears its ugly head.
Foster Harris, a creative writing instructor at OU, wrote some books in the area of 'Writing To Sell' which are interesting, though perhaps outdated by now. Foster claimed that there are only a small number of actual plots available for writing a novel, less than ten as I recall. If that is so, then it certainly creates a problem for someone wanting to write an original work. He suggested to his students that they think of their writing as you would the weaving of a carpet. There are the supporting threads he called the 'warp' and the right angle threads he called the 'woof.' He suggested we think of the 'warp' threads as the plot, which while important play, mostly a supporting role. And then, there is the 'woof' which is the insight that you weave onto the warp. Your life education is what you get paid for (if you do!) Ha!
Now my imitation of Richard Wilbur's poem is two-fold. I wanted to write a composition that would hang on his scaffolding and also be thematically similar, a sort of snapshot of what I see and love when I look at the earth. Is this plagiarism? I would say not! But loving imitation, yes, a heaping spoonful. Though I doubt that Richard would even see his poem in mine, I have no qualms at all about honoring him for his influence on me. Never-the-less, I would argue that this poem is clearly mine and not his. And I would love to think that he might love my work as much as I do his!
****More to come!****
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