[stylist] FW: keeping poems

[Jackie Williams]

Barbara, and all, a response that I wanted all to get and respond to.

Jackie Lee

Time is the school in which we learn.
Time is the fire in which we burn.
Delmore Schwartz	 

-----Original Message-----
From: Jackie Williams [mailto:jackieleepoet at cox.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2015 7:53 AM
To: 'Barbara Hammel'
Subject: RE: keeping poems

Barbara,
Your point is well taken. There might be a subtle difference between my critique group and this list, this being electronic, and the other hard copies.
This was addressed some time ago by Bridgit and Robert, that this list is a group meant for critiquing and sharing, and a contest should not disqualify a poem because it is posted here. I agree it should not, however recently a poem was disqualified because the National Federation of State Poetry Societies found it somewhere on the internet. Searches are pretty comprehensive these days I am told.
I have also collected some of the poems from members here, particularly when they introduce a new form, like Myrna with her tumbling tercets and cascading quatrains, and your  poem about seeing letters and certain things in colors which describes a certain eye condition I can never remember the name for. Also, things like Lynda's relating of her strategy for writing that 39 line poem with the same six words repeated in six stanzas in a prescribed manner, with another 3 lines at the bottom. I describe this because my memory for the word for certain forms sometimes escapes me now. It always comes back, but not when I need it.
It is not that I do not trust the ones on this list, but that contests are pretty specific about not publishing or putting your work on anything if you are submitting it to them, unless they say you may have simultaneous submissions. I have approximately fifty poems in submission at this moment, and I do not want to risk jeopardizing them.
Also, on a personal level, I have shared my long manuscript with its added "A Battered Woman's Glossary, A Ludicrous Lexicon of Legal terms, with seven different critiquers. With their critique, " five returned the manuscript plus the Glossary, and two kept the Glossary saying they wanted to show it to someone, and whoever they shared it with never returned it.
This manuscript has been submitted to10 contests in the past, and I am always afraid that I will get a notice that that Glossary is someone else's. 
As poets, we are encouraged to save favorite lines, or favorite poems, and even to make "erasure" poems from then, where you can erase half of that persons poem, rework the rest, and claim it as your own, being sure to give credit to the original poet. But already, some of these are being legally challenged.
The pace of change in copywrite laws is moving and getting much more complicated by the internet. I wish it were not so. And the argument by many is that there is nothing that has not been said before, so they should be able to use anything that has been used before, thus evading the law.
In the meantime, I agree that so many submissions here are worthy of saving primarily as teaching tools for methodology, or form, or for examples of creative use of language.
I hope this mixed message makes sense to you. 

Jackie Lee

Time is the school in which we learn.
Time is the fire in which we burn.
Delmore Schwartz	 

-----Original Message-----
From: Barbara Hammel [mailto:poetlori8 at icloud.com] 
Sent: Sunday, June 07, 2015 1:30 PM
To: jackieleepoet at cox.net
Subject: keeping poems



If one has no intent of ever sharing another's poem without their permission is it so bad to keep them? I have your A Rainbow Came Down poem — probably not your final copy — because I liked it. Will anyone ever know I have it? No except that it's one by you. Would I ever print it or give to anyone without asking you? No.
I have five or seven of Myrna's, too. If a book were out that had all of them, I'd probably buy it for the final printed versions of them. Guess I don't make a competitive or smart writer, huh. Oh, and I'd NEVER claim another's work as my own.
Barbara
Sent from my iPhone