When Ms. Behnke and her husband were members at Fanstory, they talked often about Ms. Behnke's brother-in-law Brian who passed away about 15 years ago. He also wrote poetry, and one of his family members created an account at Fanstory and posted some of Brian's work. On December 14, 2012, Ms. Behnke's husband and his mother published a compilation of Brian's poetry via CreateSpace and Amazon. The book is called, "Request for a Normal Life: A Poet Waits".
Here's the problem. Ms. Behnke posted several of the poems--or portions of the poems-- from that book on Fanstory, claiming they were her own work. Here's what I have found so far:
On July 15, 2011, Ms. Behnke posted a poem called "For Peter Mark Roget". It appears to be identical to Brian's poem of the same name. I did not have a screenshot of Ms. Behnke's poem, so I had to recover the text of it in pieces from the Google cache.
On September 10, 2011, Ms. Behnke posted a poem called "November". It appears to be identical to a few stanzas out of the middle of Brian's poem "Agoraphobia".
On September 23, 2011, Ms. Behnke posted a poem called "Dead Calm". It appears to be identical to section "5" of Brian's poem "The Saddest Season".
On November 18, 2011, Ms. Behnke posted a poem called "Mind O'erwrought". It appears to be identical to Brian's poem "My Nerves Turn to Proverbial Steel." I did not have a screenshot of Ms. Behnke's poem, so I had to recover the text of it in pieces from the Google cache.
On December 19, 2011, Ms. Behnke posted a poem called "Enough to Keep You Under Boot". It appears to be the first seven and a half stanzas from Brian's poem "The Divorce." I did not have a screenshot of Ms. Behnke's poem, so I had to recover the text of it in pieces from the Google cache.
On January 4, 2012, Ms. Behnke posted a poem called "Amidst the Lilies of Another Time". It appears to be identical to Brian's poem "Sodden But a Might".
On January 12, 2012, Ms. Behnke posted a poem called "Feed to Me the Meaning". It appears to be identical to Brian's poem "Solitude of House".
And that's what I have found to date. There is at least one more poem of Ms. Behnke's called "Artificiality of Taste" that appears to be verbatim from Brian's "Moldy Wine", but the screenshots are too bulky to post.
I also want to note that, assuming these poems were originally written by Brian, Ms. Behnke may have had permission from family members to post them, which means that what she did was not copyright infringement although it did violate the terms of the Fanstory site. And it would not absolve her of plagiarism.
April 19, 2013, edited to add: Someone claiming to be Brian Behnke's brother (and who I do believe to be his brother) has posted a comment that the family allowed Ms. Behnke to post Brian's poems.
Again remove any reference to Brian from this blog as it is not only inaccurate but malicious in intent. Full permision was given for his work to be placed on that poetry site by a family member.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous: I do not know what authority you have to speak for Brian's estate. You may also be confused about which account I am referring to. Some of Brian's poetry was posted by the user account set up specifically for that purpose, which I understand (but don't have proof) that the site admin allowed. However, I am talking about Ms. Behnke's personal account and Brian's poetry that she posted there with no acknowledgement that the poems were written by someone else. Again though, even if Brian's estate gave her permission to post, that only absolves her of copyright infringement--as I stated above in the body of the post--but does not and cannot absolve her of plagiarism.
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