How much of a poem can be quoted without payment?

David Orr looks at some interestin' copyright issues in an editorial for The New York Times called "When Quoting Verse, One Must Be Terse." Near the end, he notes that we're amongst the strongest of young literary critics these days (wow!), and that "poets, publishers and readers would benefit greatly if those writers were relieved of confusion over copyright." What's the confusion, you ask?

American poetry criticism faces a major problem, one that has nothing to do with poetry, or readers, or anything remotely literary. The problem is that a critic who wants to quote a poem in a book has to face a permissions regime that ranges from unpredictable to plain crazy, as I discovered while working on a guidebook to modern poetry for general readers. The permissions took months to compile, and the initial estimate was nearly $20,000.

And so it's that "no one has any idea exactly how much of a poem can be quoted without payment." Interesting! He goes on:

If you ask publishers, the answer varies — a lot. Some think a quarter of a short poem is appropriate, some think almost an entire poem can be acceptable in the right circumstances, and many others believe you should quote only three or four lines. If you want to play it safe — and that’s what your own publisher will most likely prefer — then you’ll find yourself adhering to the three- or four-line standard.

But that standard doesn’t make much sense. Poems, like excuses, come in all shapes and sizes. They range from single lines to book length. And individual lines range from one word to whatever will fit on the page. Consequently, three or four lines can be 3 words or 70. And what about poems that aren’t lineated at all? Or visual poems? George Herbert’s “Easter Wings” is famously shaped like a pair of wings — if Herbert were alive today, could we quote a feather?

Nor does it help to say that the standard should be, say, 5 percent of a given poem. Here’s the entirety of Monica Youn’s poem “Ending”:

Freshwater stunned the beaches.

I could sleep.

What’s 5 percent of that? “Fr”?

A much more reasonable standard would come from the actual custom and practice of poetry criticism as it exists in book reviews and critical articles. There, a far more liberal standard — even permitting quotation of entire poems — has been the norm for decades. (The Poetry Foundation and the Center for Social Media advocate for a similarly flexible approach.)

This is the standard book publishers should recognize. As things stand, poets and critics are at the mercy of an incoherent system. Unless you happen to be a lawyer with a sympathetic publisher (as I am), it’s difficult to negotiate your way to something reasonable.

Read the entire piece here.