[ Thanks to Bernard Swiss
for this link. ]
“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal,” wrote
T.S. Eliot. I am neither poet nor thief, so when I wanted poems at
the start of each chapter in my recently published memoir, I sought
permission. The poem that best describes my experience is “The
Odyssey,” navigating as I did between the Scylla of non-responsive
copyright holders and the Charybdis of fee-seeking attorneys.“Modern copyright practices spur artists to unmoor our work from
what has inspired us. Art—along with many artists supposedly
protected by these laws—is arguably poorer for it.“The modern copyright battle is more interesting than its
associated legalities. Advocates of copyright restrictions found a
bête noire in curmudgeonly novelist Mark Helprin, who argued
that Congress should extend “the term of copyright . . . as far as
it can throw.””