Sunday, August 03, 2014

Back to School Poem Handout for Middle School

What follows is a rip off, plain and simple.  Michael White, whoever you are, there are copyright laws written to prevent you doing exactly what you did, copy my poems and put them on the internet.

That said, I kind of like your discussion questions, if they are indeed discussion questions.  I like the way they ask students to identify the speaker and speculate about the unknowns.  What I see when I look at these questions are a good map to poetry lit circles that teachers might use at the beginning of the school year to guide students into how to examine a poem closely and discuss it.  I am hoping (sincerely) NO one would consider these to be worksheets that students would complete in isolation, later to be graded. Please don't do that.  That would violate the laws of poetic justice, a much worse crime in my opinion.

So, here's the deal.  If you, Michael White whoever you are, feel free to violate my copyright protections, I think it is only fair to reprint your lessons here from your portfolio produced for your masters degree at Morehead here, for all to share.

http://michaelmwhite.com/pdf/holbrookhandout1.pdf





http://michaelmwhite.com/pdf/holbrookhandout2.pdf

Not only did Michael White (whoever you are) print these selected poems, he apparently uploaded one of my entire books onto some site that looks dangerous to me and I have a new computer and I don't want to mess with it.  The book only costs $9 and mystery download sites that require you to "join for FREE" can cost a lot more than $9 in aspirin.  But his handouts are safe.

Visiting his site is fascinating.  He also recommends using my poems as inspiration for short stories, I just couldn't figure out which poems he was talking about, but again, I like the idea.

Similar to musicians, most poets don't make the majority of our income from the sale of our poems.  We do make some, however, so I would appreciate people not uploading entire books, are you kidding me?  We make more from speaking engagements. Speaking engagements come from having books published, however, so we are all interested in keeping books in print.  Publishing entire books on the internet without permission is a definite no-no. (shame on you Michael White whoever you are).

But I do kind of like your discussion questions, reprinted here in direct violation of the copyright notice at the bottom of your website, Michael White whoever you are.  Fair's fair, my friend.

2 comments:

michael salinger said...

Boy I am glad I am not Michael White (whoever you are).

I especially love the part where he copyrighted his lessons which included the stuff he had swiped.

Then again, we have all been raised in a society where the absolute last person paid is the poet.

Charles Waters said...

This is might disturbing. A simple e-mail of permission to post a poem or 2 would have been nice. Good lawd.