I am looking into this poem, if anyone can tell me if it is at all plagerized or anything of the sort please let me know. I did not write this. Thank you

The child innocent and tender,
Sleeps slumberly in her mother's womb.
Fearless to all danger.
[Mother will protect me...]
The result of a shameful accident.
And unwanted mistake.
Undesireable and unlove.
[I love you, Mother...]
Choices, Decisions, Excuses.
Thinking, Reasoning, Explaining.
Still, a shameful mistake.
[Please love me, Mother...]
Ministry Faith prohibits, but
By the consent of American law,
A mother's right to selfishness
Her choice is key.
[What about me, Mother...]
Injustice. Sinful actions committed
By another. What's inside bears no sin.
But the saint must die
[I'm sorry Mother...]
Termination of a child
Destruction of a life
Murder of a human
[The saint must die...]
The child innocent and tender
Dies mercilessly
In the wrath of its mother's womb



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/04/2022 04:37PM by Desi.

Don't know. But you should post it in the "general" or "homework" forums.

Hard to imagine anyone plagiarizing a work with a ridiculous made-up adverb like 'slumberly' in it - but, then, you never know.

JoeT

I agree with Joe! However, I tried to look up some parts. Don't think so! and ,yes, who would plagiarize "unlove"?

I'd plagiarize it!

No no...just kidding children!

It's not a world wide poem anyway, and the quality is not of such a quality that I would think it's plagiarized. Can I ask you why you post this question?

I changed the title by the way, to make it less generic.

Fellow readers, I'm afraid it's probably political propaganda, masquerading as a poem:

Ministry Faith prohibits, but
By the consent of American law,
A mother's right to selfishness
Her choice is key.

Some people will stop at nothing to espouse their points of view. Professional quality, it's not.


Les

Well, it's definately propaganda, but as the quality is so bad, it will hardly make an impact.

O.o Interesting responses. I didn't ask about the quality of the poem, just whether anything in it came from someone else's work. I'll let the judges decide it's quality. I ask because a student entered into the literary fair and it's not the kind of work that I believe this student is capable of. Thanks for the help, sorry if this was not the place to ask. This was the first site I thought to ask though when the question came up. I figured if anyone knew...

Well, we looked, but didn't find any "original", and most people here read quite a lot of poetry :-)

It's the right place to ask by the way. But you can't ask a bunch of know-it-alls and don't get more than you bargain for!

lmao! Yes, I suppose. Anyhow, sorry if that came off a little rude, I do appreciate the help. The judges did pick that particular poem to go through to the enxt round. I entered some of my own, a couple free verse, some rhymed, but none of those were chosen. I did enter my first attempt at a sestina and that got picked to continue to the next round, I was very excited. :) I'm considering posting the sestina here for criticsm but I'm not sure as it is an extremely rough draft and the first time I have attempted a poem with that kind of structure

Flash, what age is the student in question? Is it plausible that he or she is so ardent to propagandise the anti-abortion cause?

One reason for suspecting that this poem has been copied is that it shows signs of being a clumsy copy. In L6 'And' should probably be 'An'; and in L7 'unlove' was probably 'unloved' in the original. Also, the format of enclosing the thoughts of a silent character (here an unborn baby) in square brackets every few lines is an unusual and potentially effective poetic device that I would not expect an immature writer to adopt. Perhaps that has been copied. I have a feeling I have encountered such a format somewhere, with each of the bracketed lines used to close a stanza, but can't recollect where.

Aside from the adoption of that device, the writing has many faults that could indeed be the work of a not-very-capable writer; for instance: the use of the cliche 'innocent and tender'; the ugly tautology of 'sleeps slumberly' (even if 'slumberly', which is not a word, is a typo for 'slumbery', which is); the error 'Fearless to' instead of 'Fearless of'; the many crude repetitions of language and substance; the way the message is laid on with a trowel, without regard to rhythm or meter; and the poor, or at least inconsistent, punctuation.

I haven't been able to find any 'original' on the Internet.

Ian

The student is either 17 or 18. The use of brackets at the end of the stanzas brought the poem to attention. That is the aspect that I find highly unlikely for the student to be using. It really irks me that I can not find any proof that this is not original work as it did get chosen from among other poems to continue to the next part of the contest.

I'm sure there is a woman poet using this. I can't remember who, but I'm sure I've seen it before. Maybe not with brackets, but in italics? Anyone?

But inhowfar is copying the style of a well-known poet plagiarism?

I think one, quite respectable, way of learning something new is to read/look at how other people do it and pick out the most appealing of their methods to try for yourself. If you do this with poetry you'll produce a sort of soup with many incongruous ingredients, but it won't be a copy of any particular work. However, all sorts of people will recognise bits of the most favoured style and think it is a copy. As you get better you either develop your own style - probably, to be honest, a better belended version of your experience of other people's work, or produce parody or pastiche.

I'm not saying this is what happened here, but it might be fair to give the benefit of the doubt.