Fanstory Plagiarism Again

Hat tip: An anonymous observant little birdie.

I had intended to stop updating this blog and simply let it exist as a record of past events, particularly those relating to Tammy Gail Behnke and her Fanstory shenanigans. However, recent events have made me reconsider, and so I have decided to add this post.

First, a little background. Mark Behnke and Tammy Behnke were banned (*) from Fanstory about a year ago, but they have continued posting poems to the site under the username "Christopher Sheldon". The "Christopher Sheldon" account was originally set up with the username "Brian's Promise" and was used to post poetry written by Mr. Behnke's belated brother, Brian. The username attached to the account changed several times after Mr. and Mrs. Behnke were banned, but finally settled as "Christopher Sheldon". "Christopher Sheldon" claims to be a cousin to Mr. Behnke.

Why do I think that Mr. and Mrs. Behnke are using this account and that "Christopher Sheldon" is a badly-executed fiction to avoid the ban-hammer? Some of the poems posted by "Christopher" were also posted by Mr. and Mrs. Behnke to various other web sites (wherein he or she claimed authorship of the poems) and were later added to an updated version of Mr. Behnke's book, Metaphorical Thymes, on Amazon.

This evidence is sufficient to convince me that the pair are posting their own work on Fanstory under the "Christopher Sheldon" account. To be clear, I have never suspected Mr. Behnke of plagiarizing, only Mrs. Behnke. I've also read enough of both of their poetry to have a pretty good idea who wrote which poems.

Just recently, an observant little birdie emailed to tell me that three latest poems posted by "Christopher Sheldon" appeared to be plagiarized. The poems are written in what I consider to be Mrs. Behnke's style. In looking at the poems and verifying the research done by the little birdie, I found that "Christopher"'s poems are strikingly similar to poems previously posted at Deep Underground Poetry--Mrs. Benke's former poaching ground--by one of the poets that I believe that she had previously plagiarized. I had a short DM conversation with that other poet last year and can confirm that he is not Mr. or Mrs. Behnke going by a different username.

Below, I've compared the poems posted by "Christopher Sheldon" to the poems posted by the other poet, Dragonyear, so that readers can inspect the evidence and form their own opinion.

One thing to note is that all of Dragonyear's poems that appear to have been plagiarized from were posted late last year AFTER Mrs. Behnke had been banned from Fanstory. So the poems just recently posted to Fanstory could not be attributed to her mistakenly pulling old poems out of a file. These apparent plagiarisms are recent.

*****

On May 11, 2014, "Christopher Sheldon" posted a poem titled “electra” This poem appears to be plagiarized from a poem called “True” posted by Dragonyear at Deep Underground Poetry on October 19, 2013. Following are screenshots of both poems:

Specifically, note the similarity between the following lines and/or groups of lines:

electra: the morsel of my life forever out of reach
True: The pearl of my life / Forever out of reach

electra: curling assault races towards me … / always trying to press me to the dry mouth of land
True: Curling assault always trying to press me to the dry of land

electra: devouring me into the dream of my own creation / into a canvas of electra scattered skies
True: Carrying us both into the dream of our own creation / Into a canvas of star scattered skies

electra: releasing my body to the mercy of the complex
True: Releasing my body to the mercy of cutting blue waters

*****

On May 11, 2014, "Christopher Sheldon" posted a poem titled “comfortable like death”. This poem appears to be plagiarized from a poem called “How to Discern a Vampire” posted by Dragonyear at Deep Underground Poetry on October 18, 2013. Following are screenshots of both poems:

Specifically, note the similarity between the following lines and/or groups of lines:

comfortable: delivering the flesh rending / cruel slashing of a leather whip
Vampire: Delivering the flesh rending cruel bites of a leather whip

comfortable: internally bleeding brutal / like hot dish bubbles
Vampire: Internally bleeding brutal like hot bullets

comfortable: my hands around your throat / … / forcing you to remain submerged
Vampire: My hands are around your throat forcing you to remain submerged

comfortable: passive aggressive witchery / dominating with steel strings
Vampire: Passive aggressive witchery / Dominating with steel strings

comfortable: hooked from the lungs of lips / your nature is devilishly revealed
Vampire: hooked on the heart / …/ Your nature is revealed

*****

On May 12, 2014, "Christopher Sheldon" posted a poem titled “sight of shadows”.  This poem appears to be plagiarized from a poem called “First Glance” posted by Dragonyear at Deep Underground Poetry on September 29, 2013. Following are screenshots of both poems:

 Specifically, note the similarity between the following lines and/or groups of lines:

shadows: it only took one frozen second / containing the vision / of your trickery
First Glance: It only took one frozen second containing the vision of your likeness

shadows: setting my heart / in a zero-xanax-laden / flutter
First Glance: Setting my heart in flutter

shadows: a bird trying to fly / into a rib cage of steel
First Glance: A bird trying to fly in this rib cage

shadows: my mind spins in dizzy lashes
First Glance: My mind spins / In this dizzy stasis

shadows: drawing up impossible scenarios / creating a fated path / to where we could die
First Glance: Drawing up impossible scenerios / Creating a fated path to where we could meet

shadows: as if I did not know / already / that you are toxic / or that you have / anything to gain / from an electra vampire / at the mercy / of your tarnished beauty
First Glance: As if I did not know already that you are forbidden / Or that you have anything to gain from a sexual vampire / At the mercy of your sleek beauty

*****

So, dear readers, what do you think? Plagiarism?

My source told me that he reported the issue to Fanstory admin and has had zero response. Not even a, "Thanks, we'll look into it." A couple of days later "Christopher Sheldon" is still active and the poems remain.

*****

As always, if anyone disputes the accuracy of anything I have posted, please let me know why specifically and I'd be happy to consider it. Note that "specifically" does not mean, "You're a big meanie and this whole post is fraudulent". I'm looking at you, anonymous commenter from months ago...

(*) It is my belief that Mr. and Mrs. Behnke were banned, as opposed to leaving of their own accord, based upon comments made by Mr. Behnke and by another user who appears to be a sockpuppet. I do not have specific confirmation of that directly from site admin. Also, if they were not banned, they could use their original accounts to post works, instead of pretending to be another person.

Another Plagiarism Scandal: David R Morgan

I'm a bit late to table with this one, but the Guardian has an article about the most recent plagiarism scandal to rock the poetry world:

Publishers and magazines have been working to take down poems and suspend sales of collections by David R Morgan after the American poet Charles O Hartman realised Morgan's poem "Dead Wife Singing" was almost identical to his own, three-decades-old "A Little Song".

Apparently Mr. Morgan both "lifted lines and phrases from a host of different writers" and copied poems wholesale. The plagiarism was discovered and investigated by members of the on-line poetry community. The charge was led by Ira Lightman, a British poet and professor at Northumbria University.

Mr. Morgan has admitted his wrongdoing and apologized:

Morgan has admitted fully to the plagiarism, and told the Guardian he was "so very ashamed and regret hurting people by my stupidity". He said he was "truly sorry to everyone whose thoughts and work I have taken", and vowed to never do it again.

For further reading:

Teleread has an article

iThenticate also has an article (scroll down to #6)

Friday Links

Some linkage for your Friday reading pleasure and amusement:

(1) PoetryFoundation.Org has up an interview with Richard Blanco, the United States' fifth inaugural poet. At 44, Mr. Blanco is the youngest inaugural poet, and he is the first openly gay one.

(2) TechDirt has a brief article about a lawsuit filed by Universal Studios against a film company that is making a pornographic version of the book "50 Shades of Gray", which in itself began as fan-fiction. The film company's response is Quixotic and bit baffling, as there are better legal theories to argue in my IANAL opinion. However, the lawsuit may allow the court to address the issues of fan-fiction and derivative vs. transformative works, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out.

(3) This article at PlagiarismToday.com contains an update on the U. S. House of Representatives's IP Subcommittee's process in looking at creating essentially a "small claims court" for copyright issues. I wasn't even aware this was in the works until I read this article, but I wholeheartedly support the goal of this process.

(4) Finally, from the WTF Department, we have the case of copyright-troll Prenda Law, who seems to have incurred the wrath of federal judge Otis Wright for their recent actions. Judge Wright has ordered a group of people associated with Prenda Law and their alleged clients to show up in his courtroom on Monday, March 11, 2013, to explain themselves. Ken at Popehat has covered Prenda Law here, here, and here, and ArsTechnica's latest article is here (with links to earlier coverage). The Most-Evasive-Deposition-Ever can be read here if you like that legal stuff . So grab a big cup of coffee and settle in for some entertaining reading.

Q. R. Markham aka Quentin Rowan

"Up over the swell of hot sugar
up over the swell of rubber
Up over the death creaks, rises and falls
like heart attacks
Up over the backyards and bricks
Up over the smell of Ms. Roha's beans..."

So begins Quentin Rowan's poem "Prometheus at Coney Island" which appeared in The Best American Poetry 1996. His poetry has also appeared in Hanging Loose and The Paris Review. But Quentin Rowan uses another name as well: Q. R. Markham.

As Q. R. Markham, he wrote a thriller novel called Assassin of Secrets. The problem? It has been discovered that he copied entire passages of that novel from at least 13 different previously published thrillers.

Author Jeremy Duns appears to have been one of the first to discover the plagiarism and notify the publisher. He has a good write-up here. He says, in part:

"I considered emailing Mr Rowan to ask him what in blue blazes he was thinking, but decided not to waste any more time corresponding with him – it would make no difference what excuse he came up with. The evidence was incontrovertible,..."

Both the New Yorker and the Guardian ran stories about the plagiarism, with varying degrees of castigation. The New Yorker article is rather long and takes a closer look at Rowan the person. It's great reading. The Guardian article talks more about plagiarism in general and the recycling of ideas in literature. It's good reading. This passage in particular was thought-provoking:

"In the virtual world, the most valuable currency is reality. ...the howls are always loudest when it turns out that something presented as genuine turned out to be secondhand or fake."

I'm not sure I agree entirely with this, but it is something I will consider over the next few weeks.

Edited to add: Another great write-up that identifies many of the lifted passages and their sources in great detail can be found here.

Christian Ward Update

[Christian Ward was the subject of a previous post here.]

I've been reading some further news coverage of the Christian Ward plagiarism scandal. A few updates:

(1) As previously noted, Mr. Ward has apparently also admitted to copying a poem by Tim Dooley. Mr. Ward's poem "The Neighbor" is here (scroll down to page 12 at that link). Tim Dooley's poem "After Neruda" is here (click on the "Work" tab).

(2) Helen Mort made a comment on a blog post which I thought should be highlighted. She said:

"Contrary to a few suggestions I've seen online in comments that I should be 'flattered' by this somehow, I'm just bemused and angry. I'd be really interested to talk to whoever is responsible for the plagiarism, Christian Ward or otherwise and find out what on earth the motivation was. This poem was quite a personal one and the idea that someone would deliberately copy it for a competition is something I find really upsetting. I definitely have a few things to say to the plagiarist, though I doubt I'll get the opportunity to do so."

(3) Another quote, this one from Paisley Rekdal about why reading her plagiarized poem upset her:

"I feel angry that you made my poem worse. In this, I admit, my emotions are entirely egotistical, circling around and around the drain of my own self-loathing and self-regard, the particular pains I took over my work to make it sound original and beautiful, the particular disgust with which I am forced to regard it, broken and clunky with your new line breaks, the poem less mine now than some sort of monstrous palimpsest that only limply resembles the sounds of the original. In a way, you have taken my poem from me, from my memory of the pleasure of writing it once, the sounds I imagined and heard when I read it to others or myself. I read every draft I write out loud, Christian, so I can hear the difference in the rhythms that occur if I change even a single word. Because of this, the side effect of my writing process is that I memorize all my work, so that whatever poem I write lingers inside me, like a bell still vibrating after the sound has passed. And now that sense, those sounds, that particular pleasure of making—which is the only reward we ever get in poetry, Christian—is gone."

(4) Finally, I finally read Mr. Ward's entire statement of apology, and I have to say that I find it lacking. Here is the meat of his excuse:

"I was working on a poem about my childhood experiences in Exmoor and was careless. I used Helen Mort’s poem as a model for my own but rushed and ended up submitting a draft that wasn’t entirely my own work. I had no intention of deliberately plagiarising her work."

Sorry, but I'm not buying the "I didn't mean to do it". If he hadn't been outed as having copied from other poets, I might have believed it, but since the extent of his apparent plagiarism has come to light, his statement rings hollow.

Christian Ward and the Hope Bourne Poetry Prize

By now, most people in the poetry world have heard of Christian Ward. Mr. Ward entered a poem called "The Deer at Exmoor" into the Exmoor Society's Hope Bourne Poetry Prize. It won.

The only problem? The poem bears a striking resemblance to a poem called "The Deer", written by Helen Mort. According to an article in The Telegraph:

Mr Ward is believed to have changed only a handful of words from Miss Mort’s poem, replacing “father” for “mother” in the first line, “river Exe” for “Ullapool” in the second verse and changing the reference to a “kingfisher” near Rannoch Moor in Perthshire, Scotland, to a peregrine falcon on Bossington Beach, Exmoor.

The Guardian has a longer article in which Mr. Ward claims that he "had no intention of deliberately plagiarising her work" and that "This incident is all my fault and I fully accept the consequences of my actions."

All I can say is at least he had the guts to own up to what he had done (sort of) and apologize for it (sort of).

But that's not the end of it. According to this blog post, Mr. Ward admitted to plagiarizing a poem from Tim Dooley, and "ANON 6 has just had to take down another poem of his which is almost word-for-word the same as a poem called Bats by the American poet Paisley Rekdal." So that makes three instances of apparent or admitted plagairism and copyright infringement.

Further reading:

Paisley Rekdal responds.

Another writer responds (note that I don't condone violence in response to plagiarism)

[Photo courtesy of Photokanok / freedigitalphotos.net]

Tammy Gail Behnke: Update #2

[Tammy Gail Behnke was the subject of two previous posts here and here.]

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.

   

Poetry and Plagiarism Article at iThenticate

I recently found an article called "Poetry and Plagiarism" posted iThenticate. Although the article speaks very generally to the issue of poetry and plagiarism, a couple passages resonated with me, and I wanted to highlight them. First:

If a poet’s work is plagiarized and republished without consent, it not only devalues the poem itself, but also undermines the writer’s vocation and livelihood.

I would argue that even if a poet is an amateur who doesn't have a "vocation and livelihood" that is dependent upon his or her poetry, plagiarism still devalues the poem. A poem comes from the writer's individual and unique experiences and viewpoint, and taking someone else's words--particularly with verbatim copying--co-opts those experience and that viewpoint.

On the Internet, content is king: a potential offender might plagiarize a poem not for its quality but rather to compile it with similarly themed poems and in the end profit from ad revenue based on a keyword or subject.

I think in the cases of amateur poets posting plagiarized poems on poetry web sites, blogs, message boards the motive is not so much profit from ad revenue as it is adulation from other amateur poets. A writer friend of mine once said that there is a hidden (and sometimes not so hidden) egotist in every artist. We want to communicate with others but we also want to be liked and want our work to be liked and appreciated, whether we admit that publicly or not. That sentiment has stuck with me over the years, and I have come to appreciate the inherent truth of it.

Anarchist12 at Fanstory

Fanstory appears to have another plagiarist, or maybe one has already come and gone. More on the "come and gone" part of that later.

First the evidence. On December 18, 2012, Anarchist12 posted a poem called "winterscape".  Here is the poem with the line breaks omitted (emphasis is mine):

"draped in monochrome as far as spying eye black knives of fir thrust deep into the sky  white snow lapping at roots when the first sun slid through the woods jumping leaping from tree to tree rock to rock like a spreading flame  icy air and fathomless quiet  the landscape surged into magic endless surging spurry-like color"

And here is a passage from "The Secret Agent" by Francine Mathews. Again the emphasis is mine:

"She slipped away from Max...hoping the icy air and fathomless quiet would slap some sense into her skull. The world at this hour was monochrome: black knives of fir thrust deep into the sky, white snow lapping at their roots. When the first sun slid through the woods, jumping from tree to tree like a spreading flame, the landscape surged into color."

The poem makes use of identical phrases from the novel. The relevant passage from the book can be seen here. Screen shots of both the plagiarized poem and the passage are here:

Tammy Gail Behnke: Update #1

[Tammy Gail Behnke was the subject of a previous post.]

Ms. Behnke published a book on Createspace and Amazon on December 14, 2012, called "Golden Lotus: Remembrances of Sylvia Plath". The Amazon page currently shows the book as out of print. A number of the poems in the book appear to have been copied from other sources.

QUICK INDEX:

"unearthed", p 10 -- Source: "Twins Say Goodbye", Dragonyear, DUP

"spilling inside", p 15 -- Source "a complete history of sculpture" by aglitch, DUP

"compulsory confession", p 17-18 -- Source: "twenty one revolutions hit like skylight shrapnel", cultofstars, tumblr.com

"i opened myself today", p 19-20 - Source: "Wandering Without Destination", Dragonyear, DUP

"committed", p 40-41 -- Source: "Loch Ness", Dragonyear, DUP and TUS

"billet-doux", p 45 -- Source: "(yes, another love poem) selenophobia remedied", Mr A, DUP

"strings unknown", p 52 -- Source: "Quarter Inch Reveal" Dragonyer, DUP

"ink regime", p 59 -- Source: Heavily based on "Darker Than Black", Dragonyear, DUP

"breaking bread", p 60-61 -- Source: "Third Eye Triangle", Dragonyear, DUP

T. S. Eliot Quote Regarding Plagiarism

Many people have read a quote attributed to T. S. Eliot that goes as follows:

"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal."

These words come from an article that Eliot wrote about Philip Massinger. However, it is instructive to read a bit further in the article:

"Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion."

The last line is particularly relevant as that is exactly the reason I suspected plagiarism on the Fanstory site. Inconsistent writing with glimmers of originality provoked my suspicions, and I found that the glimmers of originality were generally the parts of the poems--or the entire poems--that appeared to be lifted from other sources. The incoherent and weak poems and parts of poems belonged to the poet who did the lifting.

Spotting Plagiarism in Poetry

While doing some research regarding poetry plagiarism, I ran across a post at PlagairismToday called "Case Study: Tracking a Sneaky Plagiarist Poet".

In the post, the author, Jonathan Bailey discusses how he was contacted by an administrator of a writing web  site who suspected that a member had plagiarized one of Mr. Bailey's poems. Mr. Bailey writes about how he went about determining that the poem was plagiarized--although not, apparently, from him--and what resources he recommends for people wishing to do the same. He compares the utility of Google, Copyscape, and Plagium.

 Near the end of the article, Mr. Bailey said something that really resonated with me. He wrote:

[The poem] had all the hallmarks of a plagiarized piece that had been partly rewritten. There were inconsistencies in the language, odd word choices and changes in the language. Where most of the poem seemed to be in very plain tones, some of the passages shifted to a wordy, almost formal tone.

I had someone asked me why I thought to even look for the apparent plagiarism committed by Tammy Gail Behnke. And my answer was similar to the above. I told that person that Ms. Behnke's poems seemed very inconsistent in quality, ranging from a bunch of multi-syllable poetic-sounding words tossed together in an impossible-to-decipher mess to a few that had quite good imagery and metaphors. Her comments on other poets' works were almost always "rah rah" and "loved the emotion, my friend" type responses that demonstrated no knowledge of poetry technique at all. Then one day, she posted a poem that I thought was quite good and, frankly, way beyond her skill level. I was skeptical that the poem could be hers. Thirty seconds with Google and I had my answer.

I recommend that anyone interested in detecting plagiarism on the Internet, whether in poetry or prose, read the entire article. The PlagiarismToday web site also has a great many other articles and news relating to plagiarism and copyright infringement.

Tammy Gail Behnke at Fanstory

Tammy Gail Behnke has been a member of Fanstory since 2011. During 2012, she moved up through the ranks to become one of the more highly ranked poets on the site. The only problem? Many of the poems that she posted had been previously published on other sites--blogs, poetry workshops, in books, etc--by other people.

Now one could argue that she had multiple accounts at another site and that poems were really hers. However, included in the list of copied poems are those by a dead Romanian poet, two male bloggers, and Ms. Behnke's deceased brother-in-law (if you believe the claims posted on Fanstory by Ms. Behnke and a user claiming to be her husband Mark). I find it extremely unlikely that Ms. Behnke was all those other people, most especially the dead Romanian poet.

After she was reported to Fanstory site admin (several times), her and her husband's accounts both became in active. Her poems were either "deleted" or "removed from the public view", and therefore I was not able to get screenshots of all of the poems addressed in this blog. Generally the older the poem, the more likely it is to have a screenshot. Screenshots, with authors and posting dates, are available unless otherwise noted with [NSCA], which stands for "No Screen Shot Available".

Following the cut is a list in reverse chronological order of the poems that I am aware of that match poems previously published elsewhere. Warning. It's a doozy--55 poems and counting!