Who knows when Death might come? (after Rowens)
#1
Who knows when Death might come?
after Rowens

I was at a Bob Dylan concert, this was in the 90s when
we all didn't have phones. He wouldn't come out 
on stage (palm tree, lightning). I asked the woman
mixing drinks if I could get drinks with cash. She said
No you have to put your money through the machine 
and get a card. I said what if I have no ID, I didn't want 
to go through all the trouble having her mix a drink 
(I just say put in all the hard stuff) only to be carded.
She said she couldn't serve me. By now I was feeling 
honestly a bit depressed, the booze was no big deal 
but does there always have to be another goddamn 
hill? I asked her if I hadn't said the thing about not 
having ID, would she have asked for it. She said she 
couldn't tell me that.
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#2
The hill in my latest sewer post is and isn't the hill you mention here.

Ponder the hill. Its history, its resonance, its possibility for mystery.
In cases where the visitors speak with witnesses, they frequently make claims about themselves, their technologies, and their intentions that are obviously absurd, or self contradicting.
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#3
Congratulations I simultaneously love this and hate it.  Reminds me of an excerpt from a book by Rowens as an advertisement/teaser for the book, (edited or ghost written by matsunosuperfan).  Unpublished ramblings, reformatted and given a title, correctly credited, what is there to critique? Rowens words or matsunos attention to the words? I'm a fan of both, irritated by the ease it seemed assembled.

The question I suppose is that rowens will sometimes turn his words into poems outside of the normal ramble, at what point is a found poem going too far? Like science papers beating each other to the publishing house, 'they stole my work' 'my work was built off your work',  rowens seems fine with it, so I dunno, blurred lines, thanks for posting
Peanut butter honey banana sandwiches
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#4
(10-07-2026, 07:25 AM)CRNDLSM Wrote:  Congratulations I simultaneously love this and hate it.  Reminds me of an excerpt from a book by Rowens as an advertisement/teaser for the book, (edited or ghost written by matsunosuperfan).  Unpublished ramblings, reformatted and given a title, correctly credited, what is there to critique? Rowens words or matsunos attention to the words? I'm a fan of both, irritated by the ease it seemed assembled.

The question I suppose is that rowens will sometimes turn his words into poems outside of the normal ramble, at what point is a found poem going too far? Like science papers beating each other to the publishing house, 'they stole my work' 'my work was built off your work',  rowens seems fine with it, so I dunno, blurred lines, thanks for posting

I dislike stream of consciousness rambles, and pretty much anything not grounded in objective reality or economics.
If you’re writing like James Joyce, you forego copyright 
Copyright itself is bogus, but that’s another story
In short, Rowens has no rights.

Edit: sorry, this is posted in Mild, so I can’t ramble on myself 
I’ll come back with some impressions of this found poem at a later time.
Thanks for posting
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#5
(10-07-2026, 03:50 AM)matsunosuperfan Wrote:  Who knows when Death might come?
after Rowens

I was at a Bob Dylan concert, this was in the 90s when
we all didn't have phones. He wouldn't come out 
on stage (palm tree, lightning). I asked the woman
mixing drinks if I could get drinks with cash. She said
No you have to put your money through the machine 
and get a card. I said what if I have no ID, I didn't want 
to go through all the trouble having her mix a drink 
(I just say put in all the hard stuff) only to be carded.
She said she couldn't serve me. By now I was feeling 
honestly a bit depressed, the booze was no big deal 
but does there always have to be another goddamn 
hill? I asked her if I hadn't said the thing about not 
having ID, would she have asked for it. She said she 
couldn't tell me that.

The (palm tree, lightning) bit is so blatantly Lolita that it looks like a needless not-analogy

Also, sentences that don’t look like they belong in a textbook are not allowed
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#6
I think you have not changed enough from the original text to be considered your own work. I know that a "found poem" uses the original words of the text, but for it to be a found poem and not just copying/stealing, the choices you make in presentation have to put some kind of unique twist on it that makes it different from reading the original. 

This poem reads almost exactly like the original. The effect is the same. Most of the sentences are exactly the same, most of the changes are very slight synonym switches. There is only one sentence of original content.  If you were taking something like a dry newspaper article and framing it in a way that suddenly makes it seem poetic, that is one thing. But everything Rowens writes already sounds like poetry. A found poem has to come from a source that is not already a poem. With Rowens' writing, that is a very fuzzy line. It's not a found poem to take a poet's poetic sounding comment and change a few words and give it line breaks.  

I think for this to be considered your own work, you would need to write the whole thing in your own words, keeping no more than maybe one line from the original. Otherwise, it's just Rowens' poem but now he's sharing the credit. 

I feel like this will spark a whole debate about what is and is not found poetry. I will also post this comment in the poetry discussions forum where those comments can spill out.  I'm curious to know whether or not I am wrong and, if so, why. 

I am willing to listen to logic and explanations. But as my current understanding stands, I would, personally, consider this plagiarism. The only reason I'm not treating it as plagiarism is because you did credit the original and I know you were attempting to do a found poem, the rules of which do allow for direct copying (apparently?). However, IMO, it doesn't pass. 

"Avoid "patchwriting" (mosaic plagiarism): Swapping out a few synonyms while keeping the original sentence order or phrasing still counts as plagiarism."

"Insufficient transformation: Merely copying large blocks, entire passages, or keeping long sequences of another writer's text intact—rather than refashioning and re-contextualizing the material—is considered unoriginal duplication."

"Impose new meaning: Re-order, isolate, and juxtapose words or phrases so that the final product functions as a distinct, independent artistic creation."

"Verbatim Copying: Using even a short sequence of consecutive words (often more than 3 to 5 words) from a source without quotation marks and an in-text citation according to guidelines from the APA Style."

Found poem rules:
Use an Existing Source: You must start with an external text that was not originally written as a poem."

"Found poetry takes words from existing texts to create new, unique poems with fresh meanings."

"writers of found poetry risk plagiarism if they merely copy, summarize, or paraphrase their sources. Successful found poems offer unique word arrangements and new meanings. The borrowed words may be unrecognizable in the context of the found poem."

So, in my opinion, this poem does not land as an original nor found poem 1. because it has not put a new twist or an original spin or new meaning into the words. It is literally just the same thing Rowens said and in the same way he said it but with some line breaks. And 2. it was basically already a prose poem, hence why it seemed like a natural idea to turn it into one. 

Words in red are identical. Words in blue are the same meaning. Words in black are original. 

matsunosuperfan dateline='[url=tel:1791312602' Wrote:  1791312602[/url]']
Who knows when Death might come?
after Rowens

I was at a Bob Dylan concert, this was in the 90s when
we all didn't have phones. He wouldn't come out 
on stage (palm tree, lightning). I asked the woman
mixing drinks if I could get drinks with cash. She said
No you have to put your money through the machine 
and get a card. I said what if I have no ID, I didn't want 
to go through all the trouble having her mix a drink 
(I just say put in all the hard stuff) only to be carded.
She said she couldn't serve me. By now I was feeling 
honestly a bit depressed, the booze was no big deal 
but does there always have to be another goddamn 
hill? I asked her if I hadn't said the thing about not 
having ID, would she have asked for it. She said she 
couldn't tell me that.


rowens dateline='[url=tel:1791306672' Wrote:  1791306672[/url]']

When I was at a Bob Dylan concert, he wouldn't come out on stage as it was lightning.
I asked the woman mixing drinks if I could get drinks with cash. She said no I had to concert my money through a machine to a card.
I asked what if I had no ID, I didn't want to go through all the trouble and have her mix me a drink (I just say mix all the hard stuff together, really) and then get IDed.
She said that she can't serve me. I said, if I hadn't said that I have no ID, would have she asked for it. She said she couldn't tell me that.
She was visually upset, at least she was seeing things that way.
The Soufflé isn’t the soufflé; the soufflé is the recipe. --Clara 
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#7
I didn't write a poem about any of this stuff. I told a story. If I was talking to someone out loud in a car, and they used what I said in their book, would that be plagiarism? And how can something be plagiarized if the person writing says that they took the words from elsewhere? You could as well say that using quotes with quotation marks and the person being quoted is plagiarism.
In cases where the visitors speak with witnesses, they frequently make claims about themselves, their technologies, and their intentions that are obviously absurd, or self contradicting.
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#8
It's not a found poem to take a poet's poetic sounding comment and change a few words and give it line breaks.  


-offers decent working definition of "found poem"
-says that is not a found poem
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