Charges of Plagiarism Leveled Against Poet & W. W. Norton Editor Jill Bialosky

The New York Times reports today that poet and W. W. Norton editor Jill Bialosky, author of Poetry Will Save Your Life: A Memoir (Atria Books, 2017), has been accused of plagiarism by poet and critic William Logan. In a review of the "memoir concealed within an anthology of poems," as Logan describes the book at Tourniquet Review, Logan points out several incidences where Bialosky chose to crib her source materials, which included Wikipedia, the Academy of American Poets, and the Poetry Foundation. More from the NYT:

“My rule is, check basic facts when finishing a review,” Mr. Logan said Wednesday in an interview by email. “Take nothing on trust.”

“The similarity of language made my heart sink,” he said, after he first noticed an overlap between her segment about Robert Louis Stevenson and what appears on the Academy of American Poets website.

The academy’s page says: “Born on November 13, 1850, in Edinburgh, Scotland, Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson came from a long line of prominent lighthouse engineers. During his boyhood, he spent holidays with his maternal grandfather … Prone to illness, Stevenson spent many of his early winters in bed, entertained only by … love of reading, especially William Shakespeare … and ‘The Arabian Nights.’”

Ms. Bialosky wrote: “Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on November 13, 1850. He came from a family of lighthouse engineers. During his boyhood he was prone to illness and spent many of his childhood winters in bed, entertained by reading Shakespeare and The Arabian Nights.”

After seeing that, Mr. Logan said, he checked entries on other poets.

The Times also points to their original review of the memoir:

In a review of “Poetry Will Save Your Life” in August, The New York Times Book Review dinged the premise of Ms. Bialosky’s memoir. “The notion that generates such an anthology-memoir, the idea that poems must be filtered through a scrim of ordinary language and life in order for us to commune with them, in order that they be ‘understood’ in some definite way, is wrongheaded and, indeed, condescending,” Simone White wrote.

Read the full report here.