Blogger Zorro thinks our Works Minister Samy Vellu has plagiarized some lines of a poem and passed them as his own in a poem he penned for our Prime Minister on the occasion of the PM's wedding to Jeanne Abdullah.
Zorro has put up a posting "Samy Doing A Brendan Pereira" , and has reproduced the original poems from which Samy had copied for his ode to the PM.
Ok. I can see that there are similar lines (from the 2 poems) making appearances in Samy's. His poem seems to have picked the full verse of the first poem ("From This Day Forward", by author unknown) which he combined with the last three lines of the second ("Blessing for a Marriage", by James Dillet Freeman).
I wouldn't be too hard on Uncle Samy. I think he wanted to dedicate a poem to the PM but there was simply not enough time to get inspired and come up with one. So, my guess is that he got one of his aides to come up with one. And whoever did it never told him that it was not an original.
Samy never claimed to be a poet, a writer or an editor. He is not in the business of writing. So, I can accept that it was not his own poem. Not an original Samy's verse.
But could the "author unknown" be Samy Vellu? Ok. Ok. Just a thought.
I do sound like I am defending him. I am not.
I just think that the man might have been carried away in his intention to dedicate a poem to the PM but just didn't have time to write one in time.
If you ask me, I think Samy Vellu didn't know and was none the wiser.
Rocky has also posted on Samy's unoriginal ode to the PM here.
26 comments:
samy should stick to things he know of. he gets away with too many things la this guy.
Aiyoyo.. what to say la? Did he compose it or was it his one of his aides?
Maybe if he just dedicated a popular song and gave credit to the singer/composer would have been safer. :D
anon@10:09PM: he doesn't know poetry, that's the reason for the poem he "penned" for the PM.
Don;t blame him if he got away with things. He got away becos someone let him get away...
Sorry,anon. Like I said, I am not defending him.
hey, but I do think datuk sri samy can sing well. remember Ijok, on stage belting out that 'nadada raja nadada' song? hahha..I thought that was pretty raaaddddd..
ok, back to my wheels.
Hi Nuraina,
That's what happens when you pretend to be what you are not. Samy Vellu and Abdullah Ahmad Badawi BOTH should stop trying to write poems. If they don't end up plagiarizing, they'll end up with beautiful words and images they themselves probably don't believe in.
ena, bakri musa left this in my comment section on samy. it is beautiful.
Kahlil Gibran on Marriage
From Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet
Then Almitra spoke again and said, And what of Marriage, Master?
And he answered saying:
You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.
Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.
JT: HiJacqui,
You know,it really cannot be a coincidence that Uncle Samy's lines replicate those in the two poems.
I am sure he got someone to write a poem. that someone not so creative or had no time, got someone else to cook something, and that's how Samy "came up" with "his" poem.
Point is, he got a s...head to do the job. Of course, in the first place, he should NOT have got someone else do the job for him.
It could the worse thing he had ever written but it would be his ORIGINAL creative work. But, no....he did what he has been used to do -- pass the job to someone else.
Still, I wouldnt be too hard on him.
He had the best of intentions.
thanks, JT
Kerp, multi-talented,isn,t he? However, I think he should stick to his day job.
dah mai abadi: oh dear... let's hope this is not an outbreak..
Ahirudin (rocky): what can i say, bro?
it is kahlil gibran's: it's beautiful, it's haunting.
thanks.
Dearest Kak Ena,
(dalam busy2 nih, nak jugak letak comment!)
You are really nice you know. I have to agree with you, may be he didnt know any better.
But as always, SV must go and outdo everyone else. Remember the singing in Ijok? I still cringe thinking about that. It was aired on prime time news and no, I dont think he can sing to save his life!
Seriously,
if you are a writer: you write,
if you are a doctor: you heal,
if you are a journalist: you report.
If you are a politician: errrr..... hmmmm.
Still, if you want to be a poet above all, do it yourself. If you copy, give it due recognition even if the author is unknown.
Thanks for the space sister.
My Dear,
Sammy sucks, MIC stinks and all the other wannabe apple-polishing, poetic-parasites makes me wanna puke!
Talk about ORI.... we (you know who they are !) are turning into a nation of fakes !
Ahhhhh....what a great 4 days holiday in Redang...sigh !
back to reality now.....
Cheers !
Et, tu Samy?
elviza: i know,my dear,I know. still, not nice to know and hear this kind of thing.
shanghai stephen : welcome back to the real world where bitches and wolves in sheep clothing roam.
aah. i see one right behind you!
NSTMAN : What is Samy Vellu's reply,I wonder.
Nuraina,
You said you are not defending SV? I can feel the sting of your sarcasm. *giggles*
At the height of Mahathir's popularity, Sv used to go round telling the audience, his room was next to Mahathir when they travelled together for overseas conference. He was telling us he was closer to Tun M than any Umno bigshots.
I think Samy should play it safe and attribute, although belatedly, the authorship of the poem to an Act of God
nuraina:
nah, u're not defending him. u're just rationalizing. and i think u have a point.
i absolutely agree with u - SV is no poet. if he is so, he would've flaunted it long ago.
Maybe I should get Samy Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within by Stephen Fry.
Or since it is a given that we are both into piracy, I should pass on the torrent of the audio book of the same title.
For those interested here is a review of the book.
From Publishers Weekly
In this delightfully erudite, charming and soundly pedagogical guide to poetic form, British actor (narrator of the Harry Potter movies, among other roles), novelist and secret poet Fry leads the reader through a series of lessons on meter, rhythm, rhyme and stanza length and reveals the structural logic of every imaginable poetic form, including the haiku, the ballad, the ode and the sonnet. Writing poetry, like any hobby, should be fun, Fry claims, and while talent is inborn, technique can be learned. Inviting readers to study the wealth of choices of form available in the world's major poetic traditions, Fry himself pens intentionally vapid yet entertaining poems that demonstrate each form's rules and patterning, and ends each lesson with wittily devised exercises for readers. Fry rails against the dumbing down of verse in a section subtitled "Stephen gets all cross": "It is as if we have been encouraged to believe that form is a kind of fascism and that to acquire knowledge is to drive a jackboot into the face of those poor souls who are too incurious, dull-witted or idle to find out what poetry can be." Fry has created an invaluable and highly enjoyable reference book on poetic form, which deserves to achieve widespread academic adoption, despite or even because of its saucy and Anglocentric tone.
hi&lo: really. haven't heard that one. Thanks, H&L
anon@3:11pm: Haahaa. tht's agood one. and yes, he should attribute
Sue: yeah, i think we shouldnt be too hard on him. only thing, i wish he hadnt passed it as his own or misrepresented his gift..u know wht i mean?
i wonder, though, is this a lesson to "y'all" aides to ministers?
these days, you just can't fool anyone.
Kerinchiguy: Gee, thanks,bro. I hv already learnt something from your comment.
Samy doesn't write poem and I believed he wouldn't have done that. There was a clever bodek guy who is his ghost writer... now we know how clever Malaysians are!!!!
Dah Mai Abadi profoundly said, "they'll end up with beautiful words and images they themselves probably don't believe in."
If SV uses somebody else's words to bodek his boss, it means he thinks very shallow of his boss.
A tribute from the heart may not be as flowery but is the most convincing and original.
Wonder how his relationship with Tun M nowadays whom he used to worship the ground Tun walked? This man tak tau malunya.
Wa manyak sedih....he planted hair on his head...shud have served him better to plant some sense.
Apa laaaaaaa Uncle Samy! bikin bangsa malu jugak!
Ini Sami ahh, there's a Yankee saying, "ain't worth killin'"...
What a joke. Imagine when he retires he will probably get a Tunship. Far cry indeed from people like Tun Sambanthan or TS Manickavasagham...
Whenever I see him on TV or read his "statements" in the papers, makes me wanna "ambil itu dade"!
Hi&Lo: i know what you mean. It may seem such a triviality -- copying lines from a couple of poems. i mean, such a minor thing, and people are making such a big deal. But it IS a big deal becos SV is not just our regular guy on the street. Heck, maybe our regular guy could do better.
oh well..but i will restrain myself from saying, "Malaysia ... "
Galadriel (Anu): sorry about this, my dear. just happpened to be him this time around.
mat salo: yeah, man. aint worth it.
Like Bakri Musa and Rocky I'm not ashamed to quote my favourite poets/writers/philosophers like Gibran, Rumi, Iqbal or Tagore and a host of English and American ones if their works convey the poignancy that I intend.
There is the current fashion for puisi writing/reading by the strangest bedfellows as if it saying something plainly or directly makes it less meaningful.
Switching from political rhetoric to poetry is something which only the most sensitive and linguistically inclined people can do.
I wish Pak Lah and Jeanne a wonderful marriage filled with much love and great moments of happiness!
don't mean to be too hard on samy velu. but just came across this site today and can't resist letting you know there are lots of people like samy around out there. so much so, a special website was created for them. heh heh
http://plagiarist.com/
( Plagiarist.com Poetry, Analysis, Articles, Etc.)
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