on the legalities of poetry
i lead a regular poetry workshop and a topic that keeps coming up is that of copyright/intellectual property/fair use… specifically around the use the epigraphs and or writing poems that come “after” another work, such as painting, song, or even a poem by another artist.
i found this thread from the wom-po listserv, but its pretty inconclusive — at least for me. so i’m wondering about any of your experiences out there in the world. do you need to get permissions for epigraphs taken from poems? how about song lyrics? is it based on the number of lines? could a poet/artist sue another poet for taking a few lines for an epigraph?
and where does allusion fit into this whole mix? In Major Jackson’s recent book Hoops, there’s a long letter poem to Gwendolyn Brooks that is just riddled with allusion, in places he’s even weaving his own lines with the lines of other poets and writers, but in a very subtle, unannounced sort of way. Does anyone out there have any ideas on how this works?
And do epigraphs turn off publishers? Say, I’ve entered a poem or manuscript into a contest & its got a few well-chosen (or so I’d like to think) epigraphs… do the editors/publishers see trouble when they see epigraphs?
oh the list of questions goes on & on.
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