Quotes?

If the quoted passage is under copyright protection, you do need to get permission for its use. And, of course, you do need to cite the author (otherwise it becomes plagiarism). In the U.S., almost everything published after 1922 remains under copyright protection.

There are a bunch of threads discussing copyright and permissions issues in greater detail here. A search will help.

caw

Moved to story research because it's a copyright question and if I remember right we move copyright questions here

No, if you just quote the poem you don't have to say where you read it. I checked this with a lawyer for the back cover of my book. The 1835 painting is, of course, no longer covered by copyright, and nobody else can gain copyright over it. So I copied a reproduction of the painting from a website and didn't have to mention that website.

Mumut said:

No, if you just quote the poem you don't have to say where you read it.

Click to expand...

Technically correct. But you do need to cite the author, and, as I said, get permission if it's still under copyright protection.

Mumut said:

The 1835 painting is, of course, no longer covered by copyright, and nobody else can gain copyright over it. So I copied a reproduction of the painting from a website and didn't have to mention that website.

Click to expand...

Ahhh, but this can get tricky. The photograph of the painting might be protected by copyright. Now, it's not highly likely that this would become a problem, but you need to be aware of these nuances.

caw

I don't agree on citing the author of the book where you read the poem. Put the first line of the poem into the google search box (with a " at the beginning and end and see if you find it. If you do, the author of the book where you read it has no claims to it at all. If you don't find it in any other source, then there's a possibility the book author wrote it but didn't want to claim it - in which case, you do need permission and the cite (but I'd bet it's a public domain poem). Puma

:editor's hat on:

Try tracing the unknown poem. The other author had to have found it *somewhere* unless he or she made it up in the first place, in which case it's under copyright.

Determine if it IS indeed unknown. Google is your very good friend for tracking quotes. Perhaps when that other book was written search engines had yet to be invented.

But question yourself just why it's so necessary that you use the same poem as the other writer. Should that writer read your work and see the poem, he or she might wonder why you couldn't have found some other poem for the job.

It's one thing to drop in a quote from Shakespeare, heck, everyone does that, but to repeat a specific poem--perhaps to achieve the same effect as the other writer--just doesn't sit right.

Also question if the poem IS going to get the effect you want!

A novelist I know decided she absolutely had to have a quote from a T.S. Eliot poem. She felt it was the perfect way to begin her book. She found she had to pay a large chunk of change--perhaps a third of her advance--to the Eliot estate to use the quote.

She felt pretty good about it until she began asking readers what they thought of the quote in conjunction with the rest of the book. Nearly ALL of them had skipped the page entirely to get to the first line of her writing.

Many didn't even know she had a poem there at all. The few that did said, "Oh, it was nice" then quickly moved on to topics more interesting to them. It made no impression at all.

My friend's intent to "set the literary stage" with a cool poem fell flat, she was out of pocket for the money handed over to the estate, and she's not repeated it since. (As she's got over 60 books in print I'm thinking she knows what she's talking about.)

You might want to check google for poetry + public domain for resources to poems that are truly available for free. Also Project Gutenberg.

:writer's hat on:

Just so you know, I'm in that number who skips reading the preface poems, quotes, etc. to get to the first real line in a book.

Unless it's Shakespeare. I've a soft spot for Will.