The topic of pla­gia­rism has been in the air of late, at this blog and, in unre­lated ways, else­where: Some poets advo­cate the prac­tice shame­lessly; others wield the term accusato­rily; now and then, others deny their guilt defen­sively. Strained par­al­lelism like that is not the most ele­gant way to begin, I sup­pose, but in any case, the mini-​zeitgeist has got me to think­ing about some­thing, so here goes:

Close to five years ago, now, I sent the fol­low­ing email to the poet Gabriel Gudding:

At 02:05 PM 11/26/2004, you wrote:

>Gabe,
>
>I wrote this last night. It’s too close. So could you give it a read­ing
>for me and tell me what you think?
>
>thank you,
>
>Kent

The poem I attached and asked Gud­ding to read was this one, later to appear online in an issue he edited of MiPoe­sias mag­a­zine.

Hot on the heels of For­rest Gander’s appre­ci­a­tion of Eliot Weinberger’s An Ele­men­tal Thing comes this letter* in the new Harper’s:

Eliot Weinberger’s essay “Man­daeans,” which appeared in the May 2007 issue of Harper’s Mag­a­zine, con­tains the fol­low­ing incor­rect state­ments that vilify Mandaeans:

They dis­like the Jews, whom they call “an evil nation” founded by the rene­gade Man­daeans Abra­ham and Moses, a people “who do not agree on a single utter­ance,” who cir­cum­cise with swords and sprin­kle the blood on them­selves, whose hus­bands aban­don their wives and lie down with each other.

They say the Chris­tians have secret rites in which they wor­ship a female donkey with three legs.

They dis­like the Zoroas­tri­ans, who sleep with their moth­ers and sis­ters and eat the dead, who take vows of silence and abort their babies.

These alle­ga­tions are with­out foun­da­tion. Man­daeans hold no such views. Man­daeans do not enter­tain any hos­til­ity toward Jews, Chris­tians, or Zoroas­tri­ans. Man­daeans have noth­ing but good­will toward Jews, Chris­tians, and Zoroastrians.

Nor is it cor­rect to say, as Wein­berger does, that “each year they have a cer­e­mony to honor the Egyp­tians who drowned when the Red Sea closed over them as they pur­sued Moses and the Jews.” This state­ment implies that Man­daeans strongly sym­pa­thize with a tyrant who was pur­su­ing people who were escap­ing from slav­ery. Man­daeans do not hold such views. In fact, the annual com­mem­o­ra­tion of Nuh relates to those who drowned in Noah’s flood.

Some fol­low­ers of John the Bap­tist
via the Internet

+++

*Sub­scrip­tion required.

For­rest Gander has a nice (re)consideration of Eliot Weinberger’s An Ele­men­tal Thing, “the best book by our best living lit­er­ary essayist,” over at Har­riet. (My con­tri­bu­tion to the “scant attention” the book received after its pub­li­ca­tion may be read here.)

And while I’m at it, may I rec­om­mend Pico Iyer’s essay on Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leop­ard in the cur­rent NYRB? It’s a sen­si­tive and thought­ful piece, and useful not least as anti­dote to the clat­ter and in(s)anity of the cur­rent season. (I’ll post a link when the NYRB site starts work­ing again.)

A 232-page issue fea­tur­ing the poetry of Andrea Brady, Chris Goode, Peter Manson, and Keston Suther­land. Also: crit­i­cal work on these poets by Jeremy Noel-​Tod, Simon Jarvis, John Wilkin­son, and Matt Ffytche; and an inter­view with Chris Goode by Sam Ladkin. The issue also includes fif­teen reviews of new British poetry (includ­ing my review of Peter Larkin’s Leaves of Field [PDF]), a note by Keith Tuma on younger British poets, let­ters by Cather­ine Wagner and Peter Riley, and a poster by Andrew Duncan (“Styles of British Poetry 1945-2000″).

Order online!