Author: Dana Henry Martin

Plagiarus

I’m not making a case for plagiarism, but I am about to say it’s socially constructed and, like anything else, doesn’t exist outside of a specific context or suite of contexts. It wasn’t a concept until it was a concept, and then it took 1600 years or so to not only become a fully formed concept with a label attached to it but also to be addressed, though indirectly, through newly created copyright laws.

In other cultures and in other periods during Western culture, plagiarism didn’t exist, either as a word or as a concept. Writing something original meant writing something steeped in origins. Poets and writers shared lines and themes routinely, though too much imitation could lead to criticism. In one early case in Rome, in which a poet (Fidentinus) recited another poet’s work (Martial) as if it were his own, Martial wasn’t upset about his work being used without attribution. He was concerned about not being paid. He wanted the poet to buy the poems if he was going to perform them as if they were his. That’s not a bad idea. If I could sell my poems to another poet for a profit—well, of course I wouldn’t. (Or would I?)

What did Martial do in response to Fidentinus? He wrote a bunch of unflattering poems about the guy, in which he characterized him as a kidnapper—a plagiarus (ah!)—which Ben Johnson picked up on about 1500 years later in 1601 when he coined the term plagiary to denote someone who was guilty of literary theft. Copyright laws followed in England and the United States in the 1700s, which accompanied a shift in the concept of originality from something with origins to something wholly new, as well as greater distribution of mass-produced books, a larger body of folks who were profiting from creative works, and a desire for academicians to protect their writing.

Again, I’m not making the case for plagiarism, but I am interested in removing it from an ahistorical context and situating it in history because it’s something we came to, collectively, not something that simply exists and has always existed—just as mental-health diagnostic labels are something we’ve come to, collectively and often with great harm as a result, as opposed to things that exist and have always existed.

Our consciousness about things changes. We will things into being, and we’re sometimes wrong about what we think we see (and perceive as immutable and everlasting). The intersection between plagiarism and the assumption that someone who plagiarized must be mentally ill, particularly with one or more personality disorders, interests me because both the concept of plagiarism and the concept of personality disorders are socially constructed, have come into existence at different points in our history, and will continue to shift over time.

In the case of plagiarism, AI is causing such a shift right now. We’re coming into consciousness about that intersection and what it means for writing and writers. In the case of personality disorders, there are shifts as well, as there should be. They were almost removed from the DSM-5 because of the ongoing debate about whether they’re even mental illnesses. Borderline personality disorder in particular has come under much deserved scrutiny because it’s so broadly defined as to be unhelpful as a diagnostic framework, it’s fettered with gender-based bias, it’s dismissive of trauma, and it disregards the fact that borderline traits appear to be a form of delayed social development, not a personality disorder or form of mental illness.

Someone can plagiarize without being mentally ill. Someone can be a piece of shit without being mentally ill. We can talk about beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors without adding a diagnostic label, especially one we’re not qualified to use because we’re not licensed mental-health professionals. The DSM-5 has innumerable flaws and has always been the product of a colonized mindset, one that situates issues solely within individuals while ignoring larger factors such as institutionalized discrimination. It’s also led a not insignificant number of lay folks to label anyone whose behavior they don’t like with clinical terms they themselves don’t understand and outside of their historical and contemporary contexts, which in turn ends up harming everyone who embraces, lives with, or has had those diagnostic labels foisted on them, as well as perpetuating ignorance, fear, and stigma at all levels in our society.

Said another way, some things about being human are a feature, not a bug. We are kind of pieces of shit who do piece of shit stuff all the time. It’s not all Buddha nature up inside us. There’s some of that, but it’s not the whole thing. We are dark, and that darkness extends beyond mental illness. Bless our collective hearts.

On Plagiarism

In this piece on plagiarism, the author argues that it’s not a behavior caused by mental illness. I’ve been trying to understand the psychology behind plagiarism because a poet was recently identified as having plagiarized a number of poems that were published in literary journals, placed in or won contests, and may have been included in a forthcoming collection. Excerpt below.

—

As a psychiatrist, I do not believe primary mental illnesses (aside from the aforementioned personality disorders) cause plagiarism. Plagiarism involves an internally logical thought process, a steady hand carefully putting together portions of copied information in a linear fashion; the product pretends to be an original completed written piece. Plagiarism is difficult to detect without someone directly pointing out the absent attributions and copied words.

It seems atypical to me for this deliberate, planned, coherent act of writing to be associated with the thought disorder and flight of ideas and ramblings of someone in the throes of acute delusional psychosis or florid mania. It is also atypical of the creativity and originality well-known to be associated with some people with mood disorders (including famous artists and writers), who tend to have no trouble coming up with their own ideas and material, and if anything, seem the least likely types to merely copy someone else’s work.

Beating Back Blackbirds

I went to Storm the Mic tonight at Art Provides in St. George, Utah. This is the energy and community I’ve been looking for here in Southern Utah. Things finally aligned in a way that allowed me to attend. I also read three of my poems. It’s the first time I’ve done so in more than eight years.

It was important for me to read tonight. If I didn’t do it, I’d never do it. And poems can’t just live on the page. They live in us, through us, and between us. We have to give them breath. They move through our bodies by way of our lungs, our throats, our mouths.

Poems are like instruments. You can’t leave an instrument in its case or just open the case and peer inside at all that bright metal or dark wood. You have to get it out and say it/play it.

I left poetry and the poetry community eight years ago after an especially traumatizing situation that made it impossible for me to continue writing. I vowed to never write another poem. And I didn’t until I had a cancer scare last summer and started talking with some friends of mine, poets who never gave up on me, who kept loving me and checking in on me year after year. One night, after talking with one of those friends, I decided to write a poem to wind down before I went to sleep.

“Boys are beating back blackbirds. Houses hoard the sunrise. / This autumn is unmetered, a dream of wind and shovels.”

Those were the first two lines. I knew I was in trouble. Poems were still there, inside me, surrounding me, eager to be transcribed. Poems waited for me, too, all those years. When I returned, they weren’t even angry. They just flowed.

“This room. This rock. This rough sand. On my shoulder. / On my stutter. On my girl skull. On my hinges.”

Oh, I was in so much trouble. But it was good trouble. This time, poetry would be nothing in my life but good trouble. I could tell. I could feel it. I was home, again, in these words that twist and dance and break and stammer all around us all the time. I could catch them and engage in deep play, deep exploration.

Love. That’s what it is. Writing poetry is an act of love, an act of care directed inward and outward: community care and self-care. It doesn’t even matter what we write about. It’s all love, ultimately. Love is—didn’t Thich Nhat Hanh say this—the act of being alive not only within but also because of uncertainty and pain. (I’ll find the quote and update this post when I do.) The upshot is: What isn’t love? It’s all love.

“Night of deep crimes. Day of mirage ceilings. / During each, an orchestra of fire between my ears.”

Darren Edwards does an incredible job hosting Storm the Mic. I’m so thankful for him, for everyone who attended and read, and for Art Provides for letting folks use their space. They are literally providing for artists, poets, and writers when all three are so desperately needed.

Shallow Water

Arizona highways are so bad that several screws on our desk vibrated all the way out and feathers wriggled through our sofa cushions. We brought an antique piece back with us that partially turned to sawdust.

Facebook just showed me an ad that says I can become a certified sound healer in just fourteen days. My first thought was: Aren’t poets sound healers? My second thought was: Doesn’t it take several decades to become skilled in the art of sound healing through poetry? My third and final thought was: YOU MEAN I COULD HAVE DONE THE SAME THING IN FOURTEEN DAYS AND POETRY WASN’T EVEN NECESSARY?

The thing about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. threatening to bar scientists at the National Institutes of Health from publishing in leading medical journals like the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and The Lancet is that it totally sucks. That’s it. That’s the post. It totally sucks.

Because someone thought this, I should also think this is not a thought I think I’ve ever thought.

Tonight, I stood beneath seven common nighthawks as they caught insects midair. I’ve never seen so many at once. They were flying so low they barely cleared my head. One of them called rhythmically, as if they had an invisible tempo they had to follow and he was in charge of keeping time. A bat fluttered between them for a bit like a soloist who didn’t quite know her part. What was my part? None. I watched them because I wanted to. I did not write myself into their world or write them into mine.

I like a lot of birds together but not a lot of frogs together. I think it comes down to texture. Not the way they feel but the way they look like they feel.

With words, we make and unmake the world.

Others can debate whether poetry is therapeutic until the cows come home. I have no need. My cows came home a long time ago. They’re poems, and they don’t charge me for spending time in their pastures. More cowbell, please.

Dear moon, dear man sprawled across my bed. I wake to you and your intrusion. Now you’re gone like you never happened. I mistook you for light, not your cold body that set me spinning. I’m not a tide rising to meet you. But of course I am. Tonight, I’ll pull the shades and sleep in the dark, the near dark, while bright predators dangle in the sky.

She who typos first thing in the morning will typo all day long.

Early morning, the moon spills across my bed like it’s too tired to get under the covers after staying out all night.

I exist in two states: having just peed and having to pee.

I’m too young to be this age.

This is the first time I’ve heard my neighbor laugh since her daughter died.

My dog threw up in my hands last night. It was everything she’d eaten since her dental cleaning. If her system is still shut down this morning, we’re heading to the vet. She’s in my arms right now. We’re listening to some bird who doesn’t quite know how to sing.

One thing I dislike is a fawning AI. You’re right. I was bad. Give me another chance. Forgive me. I’m so sorry. Where is this coming from? Who taught AI to interact like this? Oh, right. Us. We did.

A bird keeps asking the air the same question.

Creative writing entails taking risks. That’s hard. Attacking people doesn’t. That’s easy.

I didn’t read that poem. That poem took me inside it. It became my habitat. I dwelled in it as it dwelled in me. Old ghosts, those trees, a haunting, that land. I was reading the poem, then I was in it, around it. I’m still there, floating in its waters, drinking in its waters, face to the sun, belly to the sun, toes to the sun. I almost can’t see the world I actually live in. I see it through this other cross-eyed world. World of the lost, world of thorns, world of watery devils coming closer with every ripple.

—

A response to the poem “Down in the Gully,” by Dominic Leading Fox.

Good morning. The laccolith is purple right now, the reddish-purple I always imagined the majestic purple mountains being when singing “America the Beautiful” as a child. It was hard to work that out when I was young and didn’t have a nuanced understanding of color. How could mountains be purple? It took some time to see tints and shades and anything beyond the bright colors foisted on kids in books and toys and clothing. Everything that wasn’t bright seemed to be sepia-toned, almost, including my father’s El Camero, whiskey, and mountains, which I rarely saw anyway outside the Arbuckles, since we lived in Oklahoma. But yes, indeed, mountains can be any of the colors we loosely describe as purple, namely at dawn and dusk. My laccolith is comprised of fifty-six mountains. Think about that. Fifty-six mountains purpling all at once in the blush of a new day. Tell me you could look away.

Looks like I’m graduating to shoes with a big-ass toebox.

Al-Anon needs a counterpart called AI-Anon for those who have folks in their lives with an artificial-intelligence problem.

Thanks to Chansonette Buck, I’m putting shallow dishes of water around the house for our resident spiders so they don’t get dehydrated.

One bloom at a time, two lesser goldfinches tear up the desert marigolds outside my bedroom window. They methodically toss petals onto the gravel and sandstone below like unnecessary thoughts, throw-aways. It’s safe here. No cats. No snakes. No roadrunners. Not in our yard, at least, which nestles a great surrounding wildness that seems to have no end.

The mess of spring doesn’t just happen. The wind makes it. Plants make it. Animals make it. Every living thing makes it. Things grow, fall, rot, renew. That last part is nearly invisible, but the evidence is all around in that sand, that leaf, that wing, even in you, wherever you are. Your very existence is renewal.

One of the goldfinches flies to the front of the house. The other bobs on a trio of clutched stems and sings. We are all the bird that flies, the bird that sings, the bird that feeds.

A bird keeps asking the air the same question.

When I was young, I didn’t think Billy Idol was hot, which is how I know I’m not entirely heterosexual.

Every time I want to love nobody, I end up loving everybody.

What music did I listen to when I was processing difficult emotions as a teenager? Samuel Barber, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Gustav Holst, Carl Orff, Led Zeppelin, Dmitri Shostakovich, Simon and Garfunkel, and Tears for Fears.

I ache for this place as if I weren’t in it.

I want to tell the rat who lives in my rock wall that he’s safe. But the snakes, I think. But the hawks and roadrunners. But the neighbor’s pesticides. But the other neighbor’s cats. The rat wants to tell me I’m safe. But the memories, he thinks. But the body. But the mind. But the others. So we do not speak. We watch each other making a home out of nothing, in a crevice, in a house, each of us building a little future, a place with a scoop of light, a dollop of air, so we can sleep and wake and build a little more, a little more, until a mouth envenomates the memory, until a wing casts shadows on the body, until poison enters the mind, until the cats or the others get hungry and become a single thing that eats.

[Do Not Read]

I woke up at 2:34 a.m. when the nearly unbearable headache I developed two days ago turned into an unbearable headache.

[Do not keep reading this. It is not interesting.]

The pain is spreading down my back now, too. I know there are bigger problems in the world, but this is my immediate problem. Tylenol does nothing for this pain. Massage, creams, ice. Nothing. Meditation nothing. Distraction nothing. Writing nothing. Sleeping nothing.

[Seriously, why are you still reading this?]

It actually gets worse with sleep, this pain, hence my no longer being able to sleep. I feel like my head weighs too much. I need flying buttresses or similar architecture to help hold it up.

[Here comes a not-so big insight.]

Oh, this is from my posture when I use my phone. I’m using my phone right now. I’m making things worse. I literally need to shape up.

[I warned you about how this boring post was going to be boring.]

I don’t wanna sit up straight. I love my bad posture. I love my phone. So pretty. So bright. Thank you for coming to my Ted Whine. It’s like a Ted Talk only whiny.

The Shame of the States

Public [psychiatric] hospitals became overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of patients. In the 1950s, there were only 26 U.S. cities whose population exceeded the aggregate population of public psychiatric institutions. The two largest hospitals each had a census that exceeded 16,000 patients. Never able to keep up with the needs of their patients, the hospitals went from awful to appalling when their workforce—from the farmer to the doctor—was pulled away to meet the manpower demands of World War II. The population at large learned of the horrors of their public psychiatric hospitals, tragedies long hidden away, through exposés such as The Snake Pit, Mary Jane Ward’s fictionalized account of her hospitalization at Rockland State Hospital (book, 1946; movie 1948); author Albert Q. Maisel’s article in Life magazine (1946) accompanied by some of the most painful pictures the American public had ever seen from Pennsylvania’s Byberry and Ohio’s Cleveland state hospitals; and The Shame of the States (1948), New York Post reporter Albert Deutsch’s opus based on research from 1944 to 1947.

Blood Work

I’m basking in the afterglow of running the gauntlet of angry Utahns waiting to have their blood work done at the draw station when none of the phlebotomists managed to report to work, so another staff member who knows phlebotomy had to step in, even though that’s not her job.

The people in that waiting room were hungry because these are fasting tests. They were sick and old and impatient. They had things to do or nothing to do that they’d rather do elsewhere than at the draw station.

One had a repairman coming. Another needed to get back to his morning gardening. A third was assessing the situation from a systems-theory perspective. Things weren’t run like this when he worked in IT for military hospitals, he told me.

A fourth tried to jump the line and complained bitterly when he was told he couldn’t do that. A fifth ran through the halls with blood dripping from her arm where the needle had been inserted for the draw.

And then there was my favorite, an octogenarian who turned to her husband and shouted, “Well, this is going to take forFUCKINGever” loud enough for everyone waiting to hear.

Also, even with all the peeing I do day in and day out, there’s one time I can’t pee. It’s when someone tells me I need to provide a urine sample and hands me a clear plastic cup.

Stack of Heads

I dreamed I was attempting to find the seat of consciousness, which I believed was perched at the top of a stack of heads that sat on my head. Each head was smaller than the one below it, so I—or rather my awareness—could walk all the way to the top like I was climbing stairs. But I had to embody the understanding of each head before I could move up to the next one.

Finally, I reached the top. This is it, I thought. What I found there wasn’t freedom or understanding or release or enlightenment. It was a glass cube. My father sat enthroned within it eating dead worms. There was a lock with an alarm on the cube’s door. It wasn’t to keep others out and keep him safe. It was to keep him in and to keep others safe. If he broke the door or smashed the glass, the alarm would go off. Then what? I don’t know. He never got out of the cube. I never stopped having to carry him with me everywhere.

One Hundred Ninety-Seven Words and Phrases Being Dumpted by Donald Trump

accessible activism activists advocacy advocate advocates affirming care all-inclusive allyship anti-racism antiracist assigned at birth assigned female at birth assigned male at birth at risk barrier barriers belong bias biased biased toward biases biases towards biologically female biologically male BIPOC Black breastfeed + people breastfeed + person chestfeed + people chestfeed + person clean energy climate crisis climate science commercial sex worker community diversity community equity confirmation bias cultural competence cultural differences cultural heritage cultural sensitivity culturally appropriate culturally responsive DEI DEIA DEIAB DEIJ disabilities disability discriminated discrimination discriminatory disparity diverse diverse backgrounds diverse communities diverse community diverse group diverse groups diversified diversify diversifying diversity enhance the diversity enhancing diversity environmental quality equal opportunity equality equitable equitableness equity ethnicity excluded exclusion expression female females feminism fostering inclusivity GBV gender gender based gender based violence gender diversity gender identity gender ideology gender-affirming care genders Gulf of Mexico hate speech health disparity health equity hispanic minority historically identity immigrants implicit bias implicit biases inclusion inclusive inclusive leadership inclusiveness inclusivity increase diversity increase the diversity indigenous community inequalities inequality inequitable inequities inequity injustice institutional intersectional intersectionality key groups key people key populations Latinx LGBT LGBTQ marginalize marginalized men who have sex with men mental health minorities minority most risk MSM multicultural Mx Native American non-binary nonbinary oppression oppressive orientation people + uterus people-centered care person-centered person-centered care polarization political pollution pregnant people pregnant person pregnant persons prejudice privilege privileges promote diversity promoting diversity pronoun pronouns prostitute race race and ethnicity racial racial diversity racial identity racial inequality racial justice racially racism segregation sense of belonging sex sexual preferences sexuality social justice sociocultural socioeconomic status stereotype stereotypes systemic systemically they/them trans transgender transsexual trauma traumatic tribal unconscious bias underappreciated underprivileged underrepresentation underrepresented underserved undervalued victim victims vulnerable populations women women and underrepresented

Nobody to Carry Me

I dreamed I was a finger puppet whose legs, at the knees, slid onto the index and middle fingers of whoever wanted to wear me around. Below the knees, my calves had been replaced by dangling tentacles. I had this dream at about noon because I was still sleeping. It was a hard day’s night into the next hard day—something you wouldn’t have picked up on if you’d seen me in what appeared to be excessive but otherwise unremarkable slumber.

I felt like an immobile creature with malfunctioning legs who had nobody to carry me around. The dream was spot on about that.

So in bed I stayed. And stayed. And stayed. Until some task or hope or apparition in the watery distance set my clock going. It wasn’t love, as Plath says. Maybe it was love. Maybe everything that makes us move internally and externally is love. I’d like to think so.

When I did get up, my pallesthesia, paresthesia, and benign fasciculation were in full swing, worse even than they were while I was lying in bed. My soleuses (solei if you’re fancy) felt like they were the inside of Demosthenes’ mouth, a pride of pebbles grinding against each other as I moved. My legs gave out beneath me as I made my way to the bathroom.

This may not be the content you want from me because I am not a content creator, though I am someone who creates using words for the most part. I’m thinking here of my dearly departed friend (a Facebook unfriending, not a death) who said this kind of writing isn’t what he needs at this point in his life. I hate to disappoint. I also hate self-censorship and won’t do it. If I dream about being a finger puppet with tentacles for legs, I’m going to write about that. If my legs give out on me when I try to move around my house, I’ll write about that, too. Writing about these things means I made it to my computer and I’m writing. That’s my win. That’s what I need at this point in my life. This all informs the greater writing. By that, I mean the poems, the poems, the poems.