I’ve always been fond of found poetry, of cut-and-paste, aleatory methods of composition, etc. I believe that, in some sense, all art relies on stealing. But I also believe in attribution, and to my horror I recently discovered a sloppy mistake in a poem I published a couple years ago. The irony is that I went to great pains to make sure other borrowed lines from the poem were credited. When “Light, Pinned and Singing” showed up in print in 2011, I was upset that the endnotes I had included in the submission and the proofs didn’t make it into the lit magazine. The Fourth River kindly posted a version on their website with the attributions.

Nearly fifteen years ago, I checked out a stack of poetry books from the library, xeroxed the pages, cut strips of words I liked and pasted them together without keeping track of authors. I was young and sloppy, and my plan worked almost as I anticipated: I cobbled together phrases from dozens of writers, wrote separate pieces inspired by some of the snippets I had pasted together, and progressed so far over the years from the original splicing that I forgot how it started. (“Light, Pinned and Singing” got its structure nearly ten years after that first exercise—after being forced into a sestina whose end words changed with each revision, and then rescued from the form—and the deliberately borrowed lines from other writers were a new import.)

Recently, I was going through some very old drafts on my laptop. I found in one file some phrases that didn’t look like mine. As this had never been published, it was a matter of private bookkeeping to look up the original authors and cite them for my reference. “She put out her hand and pulled down the French sound for apple”—Google told me it came from Eavan Boland’s “The Pomegranate,” and I noted it in the file. Elsewhere, I referred to a promise that “splits and reddens.” I was able to find that in a Bruce Bond poem on Google Books, also called “The Pomegranate.” (I quickly got a sense of what my project was.)

I scrolled down on Bond’s poem and was arrested by this line: “Your hunger is a straight line, pinned and singing.” I felt the disgrace in my stomach.

I looked at other Bruce Bond work online and discovered he is a wonderful poet. He’s a jazz musician and past fellow of the NEA. Now, in addition to this mishap, I regret not knowing his poetry better all these years. In any case, if I had known (or remembered) where the line came from, I certainly would have included his name in my endnotes. Mea culpa. Sorry, Fourth River, and sorry especially to Bruce Bond.