by Ron Singer.
“Imitation,” someone said,
“is the sincerest form of flattery.”
I forget who—Dryden, Byron—someone dead.
Oh, yes, I “remember” now
(courtesy of Doctor Google):
it was Charles Caleb Cotton,
whose own poems are justly forgotten.
As for the statue, it is
a Statue of Liberty, of sorts,
although it only exists in my head.
Picture the Statue of Imitations, who
(thanks, perhaps, to the Statute of Limitations)
is immune from being impugned.
Imagine a hulk, ultimate epigone,
wearing that “I don’t bother to shave” look,
black T-shirt with punk band logo,
khaki Dockers, and Doc Martens
half-sunk in fertile, sticky clay.
(You could say all this is essential gear
for the (un)conventional libertine.)
Instead of clasping book and torch,
Imitation’s empty hands reach skyward,
palms open, in the “why not?” position.
If looks could talk, his would say,
“Hey! It’s all up for grabs. Just be sure
to use the best models –the very best–
and in such a way as to elude
the clutches of copyright lawyers,
that host of greedy, high-end suits,
themselves enslaved to precedent.
“Imitation, yes, a time-honored art,”
the fatuous slacker drones, intones.
“ ‘Immature poets imitate;
mature poets steal,’ said Eliot (T.S.),
not averse, himself, now and then,
to a spot of plagiarism:
Launcelot Andrewes’ Good-Friday sermon,
in Eliot’s “Second Coming,” e.g.,
had a second coming of its own.
Let’s invite both authors over to tea!
“Imitation has been practiced,”
the special-pleading Statue persists,
by legions of eminent copyists.
Consider Marlowe, Shakespeare,
and the mighty line, which the Bard
borrowed, time after time. Marlowe, who died
in ‘93, was not around to whine.
Or Homer to Virgil, Virgil to Dante,
that adamantine chain of borrowing.
But pushing these giants aside,
hacks and tinkers, even, have taken,
per chance, the words of great thinkers,
bringing home, or stealing, the bacon.
“What’s more,” concludes the garrulous slacker,
“someday, soon, it will be your turn
to be imitated. Your words
will nourish generations to come,
just as you on borrowed words have fed.
So why not savor the prospect now,
prima factum –before the fact—
since, soon enough, you’ll be gaga or dead.”
— Poetry Proper, Issue #5, 2014