Copyright Matters

Kenneth,
First, a message for you. The legal folks at the New York Transport Authority have delivered a court order to me to testify against you. Apparently, they have decided to sue you for plagiarism. There is a very angry team of train schedule writers waiting to either get justice or jump you for robbing them. I tried to explain about "found poems", but they were not feeling me. One really irate worker shouted, "So, you think you can just find anything along the way, knowing full well that it belongs to someone, and all you have to do is call it 'found' and it is yours? That is a load of caca!" They are just not feeling me. I tried to explain that you really made no money on the book, and more than that, you really are not interested in becoming famous for having "written" all that stuff. They were not really convinced. I know they were quite angry. I may have to testify, Kenneth, I am sorry, I just don't know what to do...
Now to your questions:
- Do you copyright your poems? Why or why not?
I don't. I rely on publication to copyright my work. Why? because I find it very hard to believe that anyone would want to steal my poetry; and in a sick kind of way, if they do, I would be flattered. Now I am not so blase about song lyrics and story treatments and that kind of thing. But the poems? Naaah. I know a lot of less experienced poets who will ask me how to secure copyright for fear of someone stealing their work. Most of the time I want to tell them that no one is going to want to steal that stuff, but that would be rude. Still, it is fair to say that with poetry there is far less at stake financially than with other genres. Hence my quarrel with thieves would be mostly a principled one about morality, more than anything else. A year ago, a friend of mine read a passage of text in a memoir that seemed just too familiar to him. The narrative was so close to one that he had retold in a poem. The thing is that the author of the memoir had been the editor of an anthology to which my friend had submitted a few poems including the one in question. The editor did not accept the poem, but it seemed he had borrowed from the poem. My poet friend wondered what to do? I could think of nothing. What was at stake? Principle, really. The most my friend could do was publish his poem and date it in the published text amnd hope nop one would accuse him of plagiarizing the prominent poet and memoir writer. A more attractive option would be for him to write a poem about how he was robbed by a major poet. But sue? That would seem excessive. It would be a hard case to win. That is why I tell poets to try to secure copyright by publishing and if they can't publish they might try the old self-addressed-selaed-envelope trick. I hear that it has some legal standing. I remember feeling this anxiety about folks stealing my work when I was much younger. I have a more realistic view of the currency of poetry now.
- As a poet, what is your relationship to copyright issues, in general?
Not a big issue for me as a poet, but as a writer in general I have serious concerns about the existence and enforcement of strong copyright laws that will allow artists to be paid and that will discourage plagiarists and other thieves. Of course, as a scholar and critic, I have to deal with copyright issues in my own work. What is "fair use", for instance? The laws in the US are quite different from the laws in the UK which are equally different from the laws in other places and the implications for a writer seeking to quote from the work of another writer can be quite significant. I had to rewrite my entire book, Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius when I could not secure permission from the Marley Estate to quote as much of Bob Marley's lyrics as I wanted. And what about photocopying short stories for class or showing Block Buster videos to a larger audience than simply my household? The issues are important and I have to stay abreast of them.
Not sure if there is anything especially profound about this matter, but there it is.