From: marek@mermaid.msel.unh.edu (Marek Lugowski)
Subject: Re: i need a poet /Laurae+Marek + Poetry Inspiration
Keywords: Is it theft?  -- Trying not to step on toes...
Organization: UNH Marine Systems Engineering Laboratory
Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1992 03:17:52 GMT

jcbarnes@pluto.acs.oakland.edu (Terson - Sod Lord) writes:

>P.S.  I guess this might be what you would call using someone else's
>ideas to help inspire you to write a poem... the words i need a poet
>just seemed to glare... hmmm... I know this poem needs work, but what
>are other peoples thoughts on this poem?  Is it too close to
>Marek/Laurae's original poem?  How would you feel if you wrote the
>first poem, and I wrote this one... they are different... yet...
>
>Terson -- Sod Lord

I think I'd feel great. :) In this particular example, "i need a poet"
occured in e-mail and got overlooked in the process of writing the
poem.  Then Marie Coffin suggested using it for the title.  This shows
that poems can take shared insights and sometimes several persons
looking at the same thing to get that telling spark.  In the real world
there are editors and relatives for this. :)  I would say, as long as
you don't do anything hostile with the original copy, such as, for
example, rearrange it, or combine it with other poems by the author,
to ridicule or antagonize or hurt, your derivations/rewrites are going
to be welcome by most original authors and readers.  It's the intent
of the rewrite that matters, moreso than impinging on the space of the
original.  There are "friendly" rewrites and there are "hostile"
rewrites.  It is not surprising that the original authors prefer to
deal with the former and would rather not see the latter?  I mean,
woudn't you?  Who wants to be stung by his or her own words, especially
since they were put together to mean something else.  I would call
that sort of a rewrite battery. :)

Last, who is to say that an okay poem could not inspire a great one?
Certainly "i need a poet" has been used before and will show up again.

				-- Marek

[rest of article for reference]

>Laurae & Marek write:
>:) 
>:) 
>:) 		i need a poet
>:) 		------------------------------------------------------------
>:) 
>:) 		write me a poem, please.
>:) 		write me a poem of court jesters and fools.
>:) 		tell me how love slips and slides
>:) 		and talk of the delicious scent of brown hair
>:) 		pulled away from your mouth. ah, marek,
>:) 		make me wet with your words.
>:) 		
>:) 		flirt with me, friend. 
>:) 
>:) 
>:) 			Laurae Pearson / Marek Lugowski
>:) 			15 September 1992
>:) 			San Jose, California / Chicago, Illinois
>:) 
>
>
>
>
>            i need a poet
>            someone to explain
>            what love really is
>
>            you can't trust the news anymore
>            they're only good for
>            finding dirt in the elections
>            or finding the next
>            murder victim
>
>            i need a poet
>            to show me what love is
>            tender embraces,
>            is that love?
>
>            where are they when you need them...
>            or is love just a word
>            thrown around in
>            slavery?
>
>            i need a poet...
>
>                  J. Fritz Barnes
>                      Sept. 15th, 1992