When Readers Are Also Writers

Richard Chiappone writes a poem about releasing fish that is published in Gray’s Sporting Journal, then discovers that the words of poet Billy Collins seem a little too familiar. “‘You may not be surprised to learn that I decided to give myself the benefit of the doubt. Call it relativism if you like, but in an age of false memoirs and clever best-selling novels that “re-imagine” characters from Melville and Austen, my sloppy use of a few lines of stolen imagery in a fishing poem seemed on a par with a defense contractor putting a phony quarter in a Pentagon parking meter – or so I told myself.'” From the Anchorage Press.