Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Unoriginality

How does one create unoriginality?
It’s not about thinking a thought that’s never been thought.
Does it perhaps come from everyday life’s banality?
Alas, that is most likely not where it must be sought.

Being uncreative, turns out, is quite the task:
Even in plagiarizing, selections must be made.
The Uncreative unintentionally the author tries to mask,
The point of unoriginality thus begins to fade.

Shakespeare wrote of love
And so did millions of others before him;
Standing on the shoulders of giants,
The cup of originality is full to the brim.

Since the dawn of time,
People have borrowed from each other;
Intertextuality, inspiration, rhyme,
Mixing up texts from one another.

Original words of creativity once poured from its first reality
And even so it’s still almost impossible to express unoriginality.


Based on: The Chronicle of Higher Education: Kenneth Goldsmith's "Uncreative Writing"


3 comments:

  1. The topic is well-represented, reflecting the original texts concerns. However, the flamboyant tone of Goldsmith's text is quite absent from yours where the speaker is much more doubting and searching for positions.

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  2. Kudos for playing with a different text and trying to be unoriginal!

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  3. I also like the fact that you chose the 'un-popular' text, and I like the fact that you put in a meme :-) Your poem made me think a lot about how originality is always what people strive for, but not always what they accomplish. Maybe it's okay to borrow and get inspired from others!

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