Collected Poetry

"Criticize by creating." Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475-1564) ^{[ 2 ]}

An irrational anthem - sung to the tune, "America the Beautiful," music by Samuel A. Ward (1847-1903), with a nod to Ambrose Bierce's "A Rational Anthem"

Empowering feminism - a parody on "I Am Woman" (first released 1971) by Helen Reddy and singer-songwriter Ray Burton.

Home with a Mask - (To the melody, "Home on the Range," a classic Western folk song)

I have a little -ism - sung to the tune of "I Have a Little Dreidel," original lyrics by Samuel S. Grossman and music by S. E. Goldfarb.

Musicological Marx - patter song variations on "Mademoiselle from Armentières"

See, shan't he? - to be sung to the 19th century sea shanty tune, "Blow the Man Down"

This debt is your debt - a parody on Woody Guthrie's non-folk song, "This Land Is Your Land"

Yes, we have no good answers - to be sung to the tune, "Yes! We Have No Bananas," a novelty song by Frank Silver and Irving Cohn (circa 1922)

NOTES

^{[ 1 ]} Fair use is regarded as “quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.” In Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law (1961) .

In ongoing litigation over quotation of excerpts, one reads: "The court handed the technology giant a major victory over a series of authors who had sued over decade-old project, in which Google makes digital copies of books picked out by major libraries and allows the public to view snippets online. The three-judge panel affirmed a lower court's decision from 2013 that found Google's project falls within the limits of fair use because the work is meaningfully transformed and does not offer the public a meaningful substitute to buying the book." In "Google Books prevails in copyright lawsuit," by Mario Trujillo, The Hill, 16 October 2015.

The notion of fair use will probably always be argued, for two reasons. The first and more persuasive is one of infringing on an individual's earning capacity, as the Google litigation argued. The second and least persuasive is one of simply shutting down another's conclusions, as is the root nature of tyranny, large and small alike. Legal tools in service to silence voices of criticism are the inheritors of simple, brute force in service to silence critics, which has been the history of mankind to date.

^{[ 2 ]} The clarity of speaking freely has been stated. One reads: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." Article 19 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The advice then -- to criticize as one might through the avenue and works of creativity -- is encouraged by the great in art as in law. It is the thin-skinned and the controlling who would oppose the "right to freedom of opinion and expression."