Is this plagiarism?

Samsonet

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Something I’ve been thinking about: can you plagiarize a poem’s meter? I know there are many poetic forms that rely on having a recognizable, standard meter, like sonnets and cinquains. But for a poem like Walt Whitman’s “Oh Captain, My Captain” or Robert Browning’s “Home-thoughts, from Abroad,” if you write a poem with an identical meter and scanning, is that derivative?

Please don’t judge me for being anxious! I keep going back and forth on this.
 

PiaSophia

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Plagiarism is using someone else's words or ideas and pretending they are your own. Using a poem meter another poet has used would, in my opinion, not necessarily mean it's plagiarism. If you'd use the same words/ideas and pretend they are your own, then you would be on thin ice. But if you're inspired by a work of someone else and use it for your own creativity, I don't think you need to worry.
 

Tazlima

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I'd think a precise copy of the meter, assuming all else is different (topic, word choices, etc), would fall into the category of an homage, or possibly a response or parody depending on the subject matter.

Does anybody know how this would apply with music? Can musicians own the rights to their distinctive rhythms even if the notes are different?

I remember seeing an old talk show interview of Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke together, and they discussion turned to a game they played where one would tap the rhythm (and tempo) of a well-known song and the other would try to guess what it was. They did one as an example and it was correctly guessed as "Yankee Doodle," but then they pointed out that it was ALSO the rhythm for "Supercalafragalisticexpialadocious." (No idea if I spelled that right).

If I hadn't seen that clip, I would never, ever have made the connection between the two songs.
 
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Muppster

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This is absolutely the best way ever to write better. End of. Do it. It is legit how to learn to be a poet.

As a writing exercise it's sometimes called "poem in, poem out" and the basis of it is that your subconscious is magic and knows more about poetry than you do. Give a room full of people a poem and then have them do the same again and they will write a room full of different work and they'll all be 100% better than if you give them a blank page and say "do poetry, go!" Check out the stuff on this twitter account from the poet Kate Clanchy. All the poem she posts from her kids are from poem in, poem out exercises. One of the root poems she uses is Robert Seater's "I come from" which itself came from this project. (Seater's poem is in this file, if you scroll through...)

What happens is, you respond to the thing you've read, without direct instruction. Give a class a poem with rhythm in it and you don't have to ask, you'll get back a bunch of poems that are full of rhythm...and it'll be better rhythm than if you said "I want you all to focus on making rhythm in your poem," because they'll think too hard about it and that's not where creativity happens.

Here's a great poem to use: My Blue Hen. It's a poem all about having a conversation with someone or something that can't answer back. So you pick someone/thing, and you copy the motions of the poem as a free-writing thing. How do you address your thing? Sing to it? pick a verb. Then tell us how you make contact with the thing (fold her wings). Tell us about something that took you apart. Tell us how you are like that thing in some way (heron & macaw, also birds). Speak to her in another language (maybe a figurative language?). Tell us something profound that relates us to the heavens. Tell us something that is in some way contradictory (the sea coming in/going out). Tell her three facts about yourself. etc. You see how it works? Everything in the poem you do the spirit of it... Once you're done, expand where you want to, cut where you want, you'll end up with something unique and good.

If you feel like it's close to the original still and are worried about plagiarism accusations you can acknowledge that it's in response to someone else's work with "After Ann Gray" (or whichever poet you were riffing on) as a sub-title.

Give it a go and post your poem in the SYW forum and link back here :D

(Also, to answer your question directly, nope to plagiarising meter being a thing. It's the point of formal poetry to use an agreed-upon meter and/or rhyme scheme.)
 

Samsonet

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Give it a go and post your poem in the SYW forum and link back here :D

(Also, to answer your question directly, nope to plagiarising meter being a thing. It's the point of formal poetry to use an agreed-upon meter and/or rhyme scheme.)

I actually don't have a poem in the works that would fit this, it's just something I was wondering about! :D