Creative Integrity

 Some years ago, a poet and colleague where I was teaching discussed the problem of a poet taking an image or phrase from another poet's work without permission and acknowledgment and incorporating it into one's own poem. He described it as "a stupid way to work." A poem works best when the images arise in the process of creating the poem, an organic process. A poem in which such an image or phrase appears, in my judgment, would violate creative integrity, and appearing in another poet's work might be jarring.