'Every poet is a thief'. Discuss.

Someone once said that every poet/writer/artist is a thief. What do you think?

We are thieves. We steal or borrow, if you prefer, from life. A poet’s ideas, inspirations, he steals from life, something he may see or may hear, he also steals from feelings. As poets, we steal feelings meanings and sentiments all the time. We steal or borrow from past experiences. We steal the granites in truth and display them for our own use, but without such thievery, a poet would have nothing to write, for we all get inspiration from somewhere, and it is does not come, usually, of our own accord. We steal the feeling some one gives us and put it into words. We steal or borrow the beauty we see in them and transform it into words. We steal the love, lust, desire, they make us feel and place it, for eternity, in words. We steal, borrow, life's, the worlds, beauty, happiness, pain, heartache, sorrow, ecstasy, frustration, all these things that wouldn't be around us, if it was just us in a solitary existence. Yes, we steal, but we steal, for the good!!!

WE steal from each other. Forget stealing from life; every writer or artist is stealing from another writer or artist. That is the bottom line. There is nothing new under the sun. What you are writing about has been written about before, and the same way, just maybe not as good. It is really just trying to be as orgiinal in your presentation, or the best, that sets each writer or artist apart from others.

I think Sunny described it perfectly...I didn't know what to say when I read it. I was thinking though...everything we say as already be said by someone else. If that's theft then I guess we are theives...but that's not limited to poets...that's everyone.

mmmmm you evoked U2

Every artist is a cannibal
Every poet is a thief
All kill their inspiration
And sing about the grief

I can relate to it well.

cute is what we aim for:

You unearthed the source of my quotation in one fell swoop. Well done! I think the song is 'The Fly' off Achtung Baby. I take it you're well into U2? If not you should be.

cheers. I'm gonna go and check your poetry out right now.

i agree with ruth. everything that we write down will have been said previously but probably without our knowledge.

Oooh, yeah, "the fly" yeah, achtung! baby, I need to get that album. it's apparently like a classic...
I have many U2 albums...but that and the best, most recent album. Bono is also a cool cat. (too bad he had to share Time with the Gates's). plus the irishness. the irish rule.

Achtung Baby is a classic and was a turning point for them musically. I just wish ol' Bono would drop the shades look -he's starting to look dated.

hmm a thief? Well sometimes I get inspired after reading a poem and I start to write. But I don't know if that's stealing.

We all steal technique, atmosphere, style and general poetics - only dada was/is truely unique.

Yes. Of course. Everyone who writes a poam is staeling words, so there is no such thing as originalty!
Em

I think that "steal" is the wrong word to use. When you steal something you are essentially taking what isn't yours. When you write, whether it is about nature, love, sadness ... all those emotions are yours. You cannot steal what is yours. However, as Sunny said... When someone reads a poem they may believe that the words are stolen as what is conveyed is what they are thinking/feeling. Just my opinion :)

I think what it means is that every poem has a meaning and somewhere else out there is another poem with the the exact same theme. It could also mean that you're stealing your reader's mind and putting it on paper for your benefit without their permission. I know that when I read a poem that has my emotions written down the front of the page, I feel like my thoughts are not just mind to keep.

That was interesting, Amaya.

When I read a good piece of poetry, I feel that my imagination has had a piece of it 'stolen' away as I could never convey that thought or emotion again without reffering back or at least thinking of the poem. In this way pieces of my imagination, oppurtunity and potential are all stolen in one go!

If that isn't a thief's work than I don't know what is!

Just my thoughts here
All the Best
Sondos

ill go with theif, everyone loves inspirations, but some of those also lack talent, besides is stealing that bad??

its not theft. its inspiration..........

yeah inspiration nice word

I find a lot of inspiration in the work of my personal saviour, Mr William Melvin Hicks. From time to time in my poetry, writing and scripts I will blatantly reference his routines, and I'm currently working on an "anti war news" poem called "Here's Tom With The Weather" that is directly lifted from Bill's works. And I'm not the first to do so, even with this line.

Every poet must be a thief, to some degree. For instance: I always collected my stuff in exercise books I'd nicked from school. :-)

In a way, perhaps poets are thieves. But that is being rather harsh. What are poets stealing? Emotions from their own heart?

No, more than that, I think that poets and artists give. They give you stories, emotions, tears, laughs, headaches...

It is the readers who are the thieves, they are the ones that tear your carefully crafted words from your precious pages and burn them into their minds.
'Tis the readers that take from the writers.

//T.L.//

^^ funny, stealing notebooks. heheh.

No, of course not. Some are, that's true. But every TURE artist/writer/poet writes from the heart, and how can that be stealing?

Where does this "true poets write from the heart" come from? Sure, if I'm writing something about me personally it does, but if I'm writing something in the third person or something about an event I tend to try and be as objective as possible. And you sometimes have to suspend your emotions to do that properly.

While I agree that you have to have a certain emotional attachment to the content of something you've written, I would also say it's true that you do at times need to be more detached and technical for certain types of poetry.

We are not thieves, we do not steal. We are hunters and gatherers, farmers. We hunt, gather, harvest.

You may call it hunting,
But that pig bears my brand.
And you may be here to gather,
But this is my bloody land!

truely, a poet is a thief. some poets steal the emotions of a reader, some steal feeling while some steal words or the whole poem itself....

Very well put Robert, I agree with you.

~BJ~

how is it possible that every poet is a thief?

writting in any form comes from inside. maybe some for of writting has effected you and it has change what you write about or how you write or you may even refrece it at times. but the truth is, is that if you want to call every poet a thief, then every person living is a thief because we are the way we are and act the way we act because of the things and experieces in life that change us.

i think that "Illuminati" said it all perfectly.. a good poet is supposed to help readers relate to a certain topic that they are writeing about, and that just makes poets magical.. not thieves.

I think that we do not steal merly transfer feelings, facts, places, and words onto a piece of paper!! Bur to say that a every poet is a thief is true of no poet!!

Good poets still the very soul of it's reader, enabling that person to feel exactly how the poet feels.

As for other ways, most poems include some kind of common phrase or expression.

No-one can truly say that they have written a poem without some help/inspiration from someone elses work, whether it be other poems, books, t.v, films, music... However, this is not stealing as such, but more taking ideas from other sources and creating your own work.

I've had a few poets steal my breath before.

In some cases, certain pieces have even stolen my heart.

No need to keep inventing the wheel. We can expound on it.