Originally Posted by
JEM60
GENGHIS. With respect, JGM used at least seven phrases from a poem by Gilbert Cuthbert Hicks that was published 3 years earlier in an article entitled 'Icarus- an anthology of the poetry of flight'.
With no respect on the point, you miss my point.
A very young man, who liked mucking around with poetry, wrote something down on the back of a letter to his mother, then a little while later dies in a flying accident. He wasn't a professional poet, he claimed nothing himself - he just wrote something down he liked.
It was read at his funeral, and subsequently spread because it struck a note with a great many people at a time of massive stress. So it was as much as anything about the circumstance, and what it meant to people.
And so, I think that plagiarism - which at best is debatable looking at that piece of god-bothering doggerel by Hicks, is a completely irrelevant point. Plagiarism would only be an issue if there was ever any intention to deceive, and I think that there's no evidence of that whatsoever.
BEagle's point about it being overused is a much fairer point. In 1996, a friend and colleague of mine named Lt Mike Auckland, inadvertently flew a Harrier into a hill in Somerset. At his funeral, the poem was read out, and there were two RAF FJ pilots stood next to me - one of whom whispered to the other very loudly, "If they read that at my funeral, I'm coming back to haunt the lot of the buggers". It's not a new point, but only an aesthetic one.
G