The Pecking Order: Which Came First? The Hens or Mine?

"A Conversation"

By Rachel H.

I stood in the hen-house

I'm certain I heard

A chuckling cluck-

`Twas a cozy hen-word;

A word from the beak

Of a little barred hen,

Though also, a normal-type

Cluck could have been.

But her eyes were so bright

And her feathers so gay,

I'd almost believe

That I just heard her say:

"Isn't this simply fine

Egg-laying weather?"

As she fluffed up anew

Each black-speckled feather.

When I wrote that poem last year, I thought it had turned out to be a sweet little work. Our new barred Plymouth hens had inspired it. But if I have found one con to reading as much as I do, it is the fact that everything you write has the tendency to remind you of something someone else has written. And so I could not be completely comfortable with my poem, because a little thought kept pricking me like a second conscience: "You have read something similar to that before. You know you have." I kept reasoning with myself and still do to this day: "This poem was inspired entirely by our hens...I was not copying someone else's ideas!" and it is true! I had not a thought in my head of being a pirate and recycling something that had already been written. The something I had read before turned out to be Elizabeth Maddox Roberts's poem: "The Hens" here is the sample that sounds most like my poem:

"Up in the barn I thought I heard

A piece of a little, purring word.

I stopped inside, waiting and staying

To try to hear what the hens were saying.

They were asking something, that was plain;

Asking it over and over again..."

So the question still stands....Is my work: "A Conversation" too similar to "The Hens" by a very famous author? I cannot make up my mind...certainly it has a similar flavor! I would definitely say it is reminiscent of her poem, but I have read very often of famous authors like Lucy Maud Montgomery and others admiring lines of other author's poetry, and rephrasing that line to include in their poems, or using it as a title of their book, or something else....so what do you fellow scribblers say?Is it bad ettiquette to write a poem, unintentionally with the same style as something that is already well-read? I did not set out to make it so. At times, I can agree with the Mediocre Writer who's famous (altered) quote is Mediocre Copies of Another Writer's Genius". :) What do you think of my poem by itself? Leave a comment and let me know! :) -Rachel