The name of a song written by
New Jersey emo/
emo-core/
hardcore band
Thursday. When hearing it on their second album,
Full Collapse, I couldn't help but notice the similarities between it and a
poem by respected
language poet Michael Palmer. But claims that the poem was "plagiarised" by the band are clearly exaggerated, and I hope to show this by putting the two texts up here for you to compare. The following are the
lyrics to
Autobiography of a Nation:
Write these words back down inside
We have burned their villages
and all the people in them died
We adopt their customs
and everything they say we steal
All the dreams they had we kill
Still we all sleep sound tonight
Is this what you wanted to hear?
We erased all their images and dance
And replaced them with borders and flags
At the top of this timeline you'll remember
This is the lipstick on the collar
And in my own life I've seen it in the mirror
sometimes at the cost of others hopes
So write these words back down inside
That's where you need it the most
and without conviction of heart
you will never feel it at all
Yeah, we all dance to the same beat when we we're marching
Yeah, the TV tells us everything we need to know
And this scene is painting in all the fashions of the moment
And history is all the same
Everything you say you stole
Every dream you dream you bought
And the following is the poem by Palmer, entitled Sun:
Write this. We have burned all their villages
Write this. We have burned all the villages and the people in them
Write this. We have adopted their customs and their manner of dress
Write this. A word may be shaped like a bed, a basket of tears
or an X
In the notebook it says, It is the time of mutations, laughter at
jokes, secrets beyond the boundaries of speech
I now turn to my use of suffixes and punctuation, closing
Mr. Circle with a single stroke, tearing the canvas from its wall, joined
to her, experiencing the same thoughts at the same moment,
inscribing them on a loquat leaf
Write this. We have begun to have bodies, a now here and a now
gone, a past long ago and one still to come
Let go of me for I have died and am in a novel and was a lyric poet,
certainly, who attracted crowds to mountaintops. For a nickel I will
appear from this box. For a dollar I will have text with you and
answer three questions
First question. We entered the forest, followed its winding paths,
and emerged blind
Second question. My townhouse, of the Jugendstil, lies by
Darmstadt
Third question. He knows he will wake from this dream,
conducted in the mother-tongue
Third question. He knows his breathing organs are manipulated by
God, so that he is compelled to scream
Third question. I will converse with no one on those days of the
week which end in y
Write this. There is pleasure and pain and there are marks and
signs. A word may be shaped like a fig or a pig, an effigy or an egg
but there is only time for fasting and desire, device and
design, there is only time to swerve without limbs, organs or face
into a
scientific silence, pinhole of light
Say this. I was born on an island among the dead. I learned
language
on this island but did not speak on this island. I am
writing to you from this island. I am writing to the dancers from
this island. The writers do not dance on this island
Say this. There is a sentence in my mouth, there is a chariot in my
mouth. There is a ladder. There is a lamp whose light fills empty
space and a space which swallows light
A word is beside itself. Here the poem is called What Speaking
Means to Say
though I have no memory of my name
Here the poem is called Theory of the Real, its name is Let's Call
This, and its name is called A Wooden Stick. It goes yes-yes, no-
no. It goes one and one
I have been writing a book, not in my native language, about
violins and smoke, lines and dots, free to speak and become the
things we speak, pages which sit up, look around and row
resolutely toward the setting sun
Pages torn from their spines and added to the pyre, so that they
will resemble thought
Pages which accept no ink
Pages we've never seen-first called Narrow Street, then Half a
Fragment, Plain of Jars or Plain of Reeds, taking each syllable in
her mouth, shifting position and passing it to him
Let me say this. Neak Luong is a blur. It is Tuesday in the
hardwood forest. I am a visitor here, with a notebook
The notebook lists My New Words and Flag above White. It
claims to have no inside
only characters like A-against-Herself, B,
C, L and N, Sam, Hans Magnus, T. Sphere, all speaking in the
dark with their hands
G for Gramsci or Goebbels, blue hills, cities,
cities with hills, modern and at the edge of time
F for
alphabet, Z for A, an H in an arbor, shadow, silent wreckage, W or
M among stars
What last. Lapwing. Tesseract. X perhaps for X. The villages are
known as These Letters -- humid, sunless. The writing occurs on
their walls
Unfortunately for the band, I'm not the only one who seems to have noticed the similarities here, and they have received criticism from some who claim that the lyrics have been "stolen" or "plagiarised". I hope that what I have written here shows that this is clearly not the case, though it is obvious that Geoff was influenced by Sun when writing Autobiography of a Nation.
In other words, Thursday fucking rock, and so does Michael Palmer.