By James Bow

When I discovered that I was a poet, and I didn’t even know it.

Yes, one of the more bizarre things peppering my life at the moment is finding my name in an “unauthorized” poetry anthology, attached to a poem I didn’t write.

Apparently, a website named for godot has produced a brick of a poetry anthology with a cast of thousands. And apparently, these guys knew full well that they didn’t have permission to do what they did. In the words of Harriet at the Poetry Foundation, who brought this to people’s attention:

Featuring the work of 3,164 poets. Completely unpermissioned and unauthorized, pissing off the entire poetry community. Either you’re in or you’re not.

(link)

So, apparently, on page 3518, I wrote this:

A sort of side

Sudden and gradual 
Leaky and tight 
Hopeless and hopeful 
Bony and boneless 

It rendered them timidity in mouthfuls of 
  credibility, mouthfuls more 
      inconceivable than a woman 
Its reason was its reason 

A wretched hair, pink hair, 
  bloodthirsty hair of 
      an original thief 
It hurt me 
  to watch them remaining like 
      that, happy and begrimed 
It might be that it was to 
  ask a bloodthirsty minute, 
      a massive side, 
          a ruined foot, mica, a ready 
              street, a begrimed forefinger, whose 
                  year was unwholesome, giving on a 
                      city, hurrying for a 
                          head

James Bow

Huh. Reading this, I’m reminded why Erin warned me off attempting poetry early in my writing career. My first tries were about this quality. (Apologies to anybody who did actually write this and wishes to claim it. You can take heart in that I don’t really know or appreciate poetry beyond what my wife writes — she’s brilliant. But this looks like something a machine spits out after feeding in a bunch of mad libs)

But I didn’t write this. And I’m pretty sure that no other person in the world named James Bow did. As short as my name is, it’s still pretty distinctive. I pretty much own my Google search results, with my closest doppleganger (a Dr. James N. Bow, a forensic psychologist out in Michigan) not appearing until page five. There aren’t that many James Bows out there, and quite possibly only one of them writes.

So how did I get on here?

Other people are coming forward in the comments section of For Godot (more comments here) with similar questions, so at least I’m not the only one to have had his or her identity stolen in this rather odd way. But… why?

Why?!

I’m perplexed.