Talk:Harmonium (poetry collection)

copyright status

Here's what I know, I think. I've been wrong several times. The copyright term keeps getting longer, of course. The Mickey Mouse Protection Act sets it now at the life of the author plus 70 years (not 50, as I thought). Some poems in Harmonium were published before 1923, so they are in the public domain. But Harmonium itself won't be in the public domain until 2025 (1955 + 70), assuming that Sonny Bono doesn't return from the dead. However, individual poems in Harmonium are arguably reprintable on Wikipedia or elsewhere because doing so is protected by fair use. One argument is that it's done all the time in books and journals. "Domination of Black" is reprinted in full in Helen Vendler's Words Chosen Out Of Desire, as are several other poems. The Wallace Stevens Journal has further examples of poems from Harmonium in issues I recently checked randomly. For instance, "The Snow Man" is quoted in full in the Fall 1982 issue. So, I put forward the fair-use justification for printing individual poems on separate pages with sorta scholarly commentary. I am confident about this justification, and I think it's appropriate to be aggressive in protecting fair use from the copyright warriors. I'll reintroduce the poem, not because I'm sure I'm right, but because the I think the discussion should mature before deletion begins. I won't add any further poems however. I'll assume the project is aborted until I'm told otherwise. Rats 18:33, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

this book is now in the public domain--I thought it would be useful to start adding the poems to the wiki

• Why is this book in the public domain? Please cite a reference. It was apparently published in 1923, which is the first year for which copyrights have not (and sadly will not) expire. If Harmonium's copyright has lapsed, we need to explicitly document this unusual case, yes? Arch dude 15:41, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
• OK, we are now in agreement that the book as a whole is not known to be in the public domain. Therefore, you now assert that it is acceptable to republish complete poems of the work under the "fair use" doctrine. I just reviewed the "fair use doctrine (thanks for the link.) IMHO, your stated goal of reproducing them all on Wikipedia will violate fair use, because you will have reproduced the contents of "Harmonium" in a way that is semantically equivalent to the work as a whole. I personally think that current copyright law is a peversion of the US constitution, but we need to keep wikipedia clean. However, if you can find specific poems that were published prior to 1923, then please publish them and link them to the "Harmonium" article. Even better: if there is a literary executor, perhaps the executor would simply release the material. Other Authors have found that a free e-copy of a work actually stimulates sales. Arch dude 04:15, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Arch dude is certainly entitled to his opinion, and he may be right. It's worth discussing. What upsets me is that a poem-plus-discussion ("Another Weeping Woman") has been deleted before the discussion had really gotten under way, and long before "semantic equivalence" between Harmonium and my little project had been reached. I've put up nineteen or twenty pages, but there are several times that many poems in Harmonium, including many that would be represented in the project only by cantos, not the whole poem. So even if I understood "semantic equivalence" in this context (I understand the semantic equivalence of 'Snow is white' and 'Schnee ist weiss'), I wouldn't understand the haste to delete "Another Weeping Woman", which seems like the aggression one would expect from an RIAA lawyer rather than a Wikipedian. If a discussion had been completed before deletion had started, I would have asked for clarification about what Arch dude means by "clean" and why it is "important". If it's important because there is a possibility that overly zealous copyright warriors might threaten legal steps, then fair use will die a death of a thousand possible-threat cuts. Cleanliness would be perfect anticipation of what lawyers might possibly object to. Rats 03:26, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I also addressed this issue in connection with "Disillusionment at Ten O'Clock" [1]].

According to William H. Bevis ("The Arrangement of Harmonium", in ELH Vol 37, No 3 1970 pp. 456-473) all but a handful of Harmonium's poems were published in various places (magazines, etc.) prior to the publication of Harmonium in 1923: "sixty-seven of the seventy-four poems of the 1923 Harmonium had first been published in small magazines between 1914 and 1923." This means that the project of putting Harmonium's poems on Wikipedia can go ahead, taking care to leave out the 7 poems that hadn't been published before Harmonium's publication. Bevis indicates that Robert Buttel's Wallace Stevens: The Making of Harmonium has the gory details. I'll consult this to identify the seven poems in question before going ahead with the Wikipedia project about Harmonium. Any objections? Rats 05:51, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

This is great. please do publish all of the pre-1923 poems, with commentary, and reference "harmonium" from each of them. In my (not a lawyer) opinion, there is absolutely no way that this is a copyvio. However, for each poem, please do reference the pre-1923 publication, or at least your reason to believe that a pre-1923 publication exists. Please do this for two reasons:

• it is an important part of the encyclopeadic record for each poem
• it absolutely crushes any possible argument about copyright

May Sonny Bono burn in hell. -Arch dude 04:19, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

• grin* Rats 12:26, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

A sentence has been added about a connection to "pataphysics". This is new to me, and genuinely interesting. I'd like to bundle it into a brief section on the philosophical implications of Steven's poetry. Such a section would be the appropriate place for this sentence, rather than the section about introductory puzzles and questions. Rats 18:34, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

deleted poem

I will post it on wikisource,along with many others, in the next few days. Then I will figure out how to add the linking template thingie to 'source. --Lacatosias 17:04, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

Robert Buttel's Wallace Stevens: The Making of Harmonium has first-publication information for most poems in Harmonium. We should feel able to refer to it as authoritative, as it's been out since 1967 and hasn't been contradicted by copyright lawyers or scholars. Rats 17:40, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I've consulted Wallace Stevens: A Bibliography (1973: University of Pittsburgh Press) for copyright information that might be in the first editions of Harmonium, but the information is too general to be really helpful. The first edition's front matter includes this: "The poems in this book, with the exception of "The Comedian as the Letter C" and a few others, have been published before in Others, Secession, Rogue, The Soil, The Modern School, Broom, Contact, The New Republic, The Measure, The Little Review, The Dial, and particularly in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, of Chicago, edited by Harriet Monroe."

Hey Critics, How About a Table of Contents?

Do you think you could take time out of analyzing Stevens' poetry and a actually bother listing the contents of this poetry collection? Or is that crude act of mere bibliography beneath you? I mean, it's not like it's an encyclopedia entry or something... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.113.99.228 (talk) 04:55, 26 September 2007 (UTC) The idea about a table of contents is good. I'll implement it as soon as possible, unless the essay is deemed `not sufficiently encyclopedic'. If that's so, let others do the repairs. If the essay and commentaries are considered beyond repair, I'd appreciate notice of two weeks or so, in order to copy what I've done to my personal computer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rats (talk • contribs) 02:24, 29 September 2007 (UTC) Having some roundup of critical opinion on a book of poems is fine, but right now it makes up 90% of the article, which is way, way too much. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.113.99.228 (talk) 17:52, 29 September 2007 (UTC) The project isn't complete yet. For one thing, less than half the poems have been set up. So in my opinion it's too soon to set flags. It's not clear that the "Special:Contributions" comment is coming from an editor. If not, that person and I will just be setting up and tearing down the flags, because I will be disputing that person's authority to intervene in that manner. What would be helpful is some reasoning behind the "way, way too much" judgment about roundup of critical opinion. Where does that come from? What alternative is being proposed? Given the Wikipedia imperative about avoiding a point of view, isn't a large sampling of critical opinion a service to the reader?—Preceding unsigned comment added by Rats (talk • contribs) 22:51, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Removed unnecessary, wasteful original research, replaced with a better (still far-from-complete) version that can be used as a template for further expansion/improvement. "I am become death, destroyer of worlds"- Oppenheimer (talk) 07:08, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

I would like to maybe reopen this discussion. As suggested above, this article is purely a "roundup of critical opinion". It's nice to make it available and all, but insofar as the site is meant for everyday readers, this article serves almost no purpose. I can't imagine that anyone comes to Wikipedia for this sort of critical sampling. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.163.73.52 (talk) 23:51, 30 August 2012 (UTC) I am not an editor but I agree with this unsigned comment of August 2012. Only specialist scholars and grad students want to read a synopsis of research. If people coming to Wikipedia want to know more about Stevens' poems, they want readings of these poems that demonstrate Stevens genius and his approach to poetry. Commentaries on the best and most anthologized poems will be, IMHO, most appreciated. The article on Harmonium might give a shortened list of the poems and use that as links to commentaries on those individual poems. Why wld anyone want to read the list of all the poems in the book and then reread it in a footnote. I wld like to pare down this index and make it useful. I have already added some commentaries on "Thirteen Ways," "Earthly Anecdote," "Peter Quince," and "Sunday Morning." If I proceed with this view, will I be accused of vandalism? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wolffg (talk • contribs) 15:02, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Vandalism alert

Someone who signed in as `midnightdreary' vandalized the poem "The Jack-Rabbit", replacing the authentic poem by a spoof version. I have returned the authentic poem.Rats (talk) 16:06, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism?

I've reverted to a longer version. the article had been severely truncated, and no explanation was offered here. It looks like vandalism to me. Rats (talk) 00:11, 8 March 2009 (UTC) Quite to the contrary, all of those edits were made because, as should be very obvious, the current version is unencyclopedic and contains little factual information. "I am become death, destroyer of worlds"- Oppenheimer (talk) 15:05, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

All of the paragraphs are predominantly expository of critical opinion. Isn't that factual information in this area? However, it is certainly fair to dispute my colouring of the exposition. I don't know whether it's unencyclopedic or not, and I'd agree that the issue is arguable. So let's discuss it. But "as should be very obvious" is not an argument or reason. Death/Destroyer's point about wastefulness would be a reason for trimming the entry, but what is the standard for wastefulness? Is it a technical standard, having to do with memory storage, or is the standard to be provided by some other entry in Wikipedia or another encyclopedia? Rats (talk) 03:14, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Agree with above comment... and I think the section entitled "Of what was it the proclamation?" needs to be deleted, and fast. It sounds like the opening of a lecture on the book. These are questions we answer in analysis... highly interpretive analysis that will vary depending who you ask. Unhelpful section. You can pick any line from any poet and put a question mark behind it... that doesn't qualify as encyclopedic material. Riverseaocean (talk) 03:55, 22 February 2010 (UTC)Riverseaocean

Reply to Riverseaocean. The brief section in question merely quotes a question posed by Vendler. And for the rest, it merely mentions some poems as presenting puzzles or mysteries for the interpreter. Reply to Pepubuslo. Suggestions about what to change would be helpful. --Rats (talk) 18:23, 9 September 2010 (UTC) Belated reply to Rats (from pepebuslo, though I'm not currently logged in): almost the entire article. The "mysteries" you mention are outside the realm of encyclopedic information: examples of this would be when it was published, how it was received, what the subject was. I.e., stuff which cannot be legitimately disputed. Criticism and most literary analysis of the content is not verifiable. You said yourself they are opinion, which violates WP: NPOV. Also, to clarify, the term I meant to use was "useless".

I would fix all this myself but I've forgotten most of what I know about Stevens and am not familiar with many reputable sources on the subject. I'll do the sensible, mature thing and contact someone higher up to help resolve this. 98.192.86.244 (talk) 11:29, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Template

Seeing as though most of the poems in this collection have their own articles, I figured it would be beneficial for those reading each of the articles in sequence to have a template that would include all the poems in the collection. I would like to add one to each of the individual poem pages (is there a fast way to do this?), though since the list is long it should probably be on autohide, which someone with more knowledge of templates may be able to take care of.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Harmonium Retroviseur (talk) 00:30, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Stopping by for some information on the book, I have to say this article is almost completely useless for the average reader. Metalello (talk) 18:02, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Too long?

By comparison with the Wikipedia article on "The love song of J. Afred Prufrock", the "Harmonium" page seems to be of acceptable length. So the "length" flag has been removed. Rats (talk) 14:10, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Tone?

The "tone" guidelines stipulates that formal tone should be used: "Formal tone means that the article should not be written using unintelligible argot, slang, colloquialisms, doublespeak, legalese, or jargon; it means that the English language should be used in a businesslike manner." I think the tone flag should be removed until it's clear that the article violates this stricture. If there is unintelligible argot, etc., then of course it should be removed. That can be done without setting the tone flag.Rats (talk) 14:33, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

too many sections?

I found nothing in the "headers and sections" guidelines to indicate that a flag was warranted in this article.Rats (talk) 14:33, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

reorganization?

The bald reference to the page on layout guidelines didn't help me. Some specific recommendations would be helpful.Rats (talk) 14:54, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

First section before TOC here is terrible. Way too long and full of information that, if it even belongs in this article, should appear elsewhere.70.174.155.35 (talk) 09:05, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:American Smooth (book) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 18:46, 12 September 2016 (UTC)