Recently, in the writing community that I have been a part of the last three years, online, there has been a lot of controversy related to plagiarism. There have been claims of not only pure theft of words, but also the theft of less-quantifiable concepts.
Poetic theme. Phraseology. Rhythm. Core poetic image.
Mind you, the online world is rife with writing based off of, or inspired by, another's ideas. The poetic community I am a part of uses writing prompts to inspire many writers to stretch themselves. Oftentimes, those prompts are used verbatim by the participants of the prompt. Poets get involved in wordplay of varying levels of intimacy, which usually builds upon the writing of someone else in a Poem-trail.
This cross-pollination of ideas, the common font of inspiration, leads to a lot of writing that is very similar. Much of that writing could be interpreted as plagiarism, if the broadest definition of the term is applied.
And that says nothing of outside influences...
As a writer, I prefer to write with music playing, as it stirs my creativity, and has also served as a wellspring of inspiration to me. Many of my poems have a piece of music as a jumping-off point.
So, I decided to bring together several of my poems into this collection. Inspired by music. In homage to that music.
Not plagiarism. Improvisational harmonies.
