In Praise Of Plagiarism Poem by gershon hepner

Every writer has to borrow,
turning yesteryear to morrow.
Everything may be annexed,
patents don’t exist for text;
once the essence has been sucked,
time has come to deconstruct.
Laud the ism of the plager,
turning minor into major,
which should turn you on unless,
unlike him, you can’t second guess.
Everything he comes across
turns by alchemy from dross
to gold, which is this verse you read:
let it roll like tumbleweed.


John Banville reviews “The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde, ” edited by Merlin Holland and Rupert Hart-Davis (Henry Holt) in “The Master of Inversion” (the LA Times Book Review, November 12,2000) . In 1881 Oscar Wilde published a volume of poetry and sent gift copies to people like Gladstone and Browning. The poems were mocked as derivative, but Wilde wrote some years later: “The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes, and he annexes everything.”



11/12/00