Tags: loving of art, sharing of art, writing of art, poet as art, imagery, alliteration, syntax
This poem was really one of the most fun to write I’ve written. You’ll probably notice some callbacks to other poems in this series, particularly the previous one.
a plague upon my brain
James Bowden
Submitting someone else's text as one's own or attempting to blur the line between one's own ideas or words and those borrowed from another source
--Kent State University
plagiarism–that nasty bastard!
explicitly sworn nemesis
(keep your enemies closest)
of third-graders and career academicians alike,
affront to honor, honesty, hubris!
Thoughtcrime!, Ideatheft! I cry,
and set me out to write something original:
I am a writer. You ask for a poem, an original one.
I offer you a blade of grass. You say it is not good enough,
so I offer you a poem about a blade of grass woven into
mine. It is enough for me, and it will be enough for you.
You extend me half-loaf of bread; will you really be offended should I chew it up,
hold it years in mouth, a kind of grass-dough waiting?
I eat of your body that others may eat of mine.
Thinketh thou that Jesus meant his flesh to stop at his twelve disciples?
I mean, look. I am a neural network. I read everything. I own you.
I backprop you and take you, preprocessed, into me.
You ask me to generate something new, but there is no chance
you are not part of it–there are no parts.
To have a door, you say.
To be a door, I reply.
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Works Cited, or A Futile Attempt to Recapitulate Everything My Brain Has Ever Loved
A plague on both your houses – Romeo and Juliet (William Shakespeare)
thoughtcrime – 1984 (George Orwell)
You ask for a poem. / I offer you a blade of grass. / You say it is not good enough. – “A Blade of Grass” (Brian Patten)
A blade of grass is the journeywork of the stars – Leaves of Grass (Walt Whitman)
I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours. /…/ If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much. – “How I Go to the Woods” (Mary Oliver)
I still feel like the world is a piece of bread / I’m holding out half to you – “At a Waterfall, Reykjavik” (Eileen Myles)
A lunch spent marinating his tongue in fruit. – “As Light” (Devin Kelly)
Whoever eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abides in me, and I in him. – John 6.56
Let me listen to the rain’s one note and hear a beginner’s song. “Rain, New Year’s Eve” (Maggie Smith)
I am what you will wear forever. – “Memento Mori” (Chelsea Dingman)
Of course you love me, you’re wearing one of my socks. – “Watching you talk on the phone, I consider the empty space around atoms–” (Rhiannon McGavin)
I mean like, woo, there it was. – “Alpha Step” (Jack Underwood)
I am a truck. I run everything. / I own you. – “Jesus Suckles” (Anne Sexton)
I made you and take you made into me – “Recreation” (Audre Lorde)
“Learning representations by back-propagating errors” (Rumelhart, Hinton and Williams 1986)
“Generative Adversarial Nets” (Goodfellow et al. 2014)
There is no chance that we will fall apart / There is no chance / There are no parts. “Poem Number Two on Bell’s Theorem, or The New Physicality of Long Distance Love” (June Jordan)
To have a door. – “I don’t want to be a spice store” (Christian Wiman)
All modesty is false modesty / when it comes to poems – “Not to Know How to Live” (Jim Moore)
It’s hard to say I need you enough – “Morning Love Poem” (Tara Skurtu)
You gave me blue and I gave you yellow. / Together we are simple green. – “When Giving Is All We Have” (Alberto Ríos)
There are no borders, only wind. “Meditations in an Emergency” (Cameron Awkward-Rich)
The need for the new love is faithfulness to the old – “Wait” (Galway Kinnell)
how deeply my body is stained by yours – [“In this world”] (Izumi Shikibu)
Is it still his life he moves through, or does / That end at the end of what he can name? – “My God, It’s Full of Stars” (Tracy K. Smith)
etcetera, etcetera.
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I’d list some references, but hopefully you’ve gotten your fill through the poem already.