The NYT featured an interesting op-ed by poet and critic David Orr on the restrictions of copyright law and the well-known fogginess of Fair Use when quoting poetry (“When Quoting Verse, One Must Be Terse”, Sept 8, 2011). Orr rightly points out that the unofficial standard used by poetry critics is often to include the entire text of a poem; however, legally speaking, this practice oversteps Fair Use.
“As things stand, poets and critics are at the mercy of an incoherent system,” Orr writes. As we in higher ed are too well aware, one could easily replace “critic” with teacher.
Personally, I have no shame about having shared entire poems here, on this blog–in part this is because one can hardly talk about a poem without having access to the poem, but also because I believe that poets, along with many other classes of artists, benefit from open sharing of their work.
Stephen Dobyns’ new book of essays, “Next Word, Better Word” quotes three poems of mine in their entirety. Cost: zero. I own the rights to all my work, and I allow anybody everybody to reprint it for no fee. Free.