Just now seeing this thread, and thought I'd comment:
1. LeRoy's poem should say "Death's" (with an apostrophe) of course.
2. I see Mary Hind's poem as an independent creation. They share the "demanding candy" lines, and they both appear at the end, but this seems a common enough term for many people to use. A quick search online led me to this poem by Al Lane at
https://altheauthor.wordpress.com/2016/10/31/halloween-haiku/ (it also appears at
http://www.haikuniverse.com/halloween-haiku-21st-of-25-by-alistair-lane/):
Dark Halloween night
Ghosts and goblins roam the earth
Demanding candy
I'm sure others could be found without too much trouble.
3. I note that this thread asks if the later poem is a deja-ku OR a rip-off. Well, rip-offs are PART of the spectrum of what I've called deja-ku, so I'm not sure that "or" is accurate. On the other hand, I appreciate the implication that deja-ku can be positive as well as being a negative thing like a rip-off.
4. Jennifer Sutherland says "Should I ever have the misfortune to commit deja-ku." This statement suggests a serious misunderstanding of deja-ku. Deja-ku is not a pejorative. In fact, most kinds of deja-ku are GOOD, such as sharing the same subject (such as season words), homage, allusion, parody, and more. The "bad" kinds of deja-ku are greatly in the minority, and include overt plagiarism, accidental plagiarism (cryptomnesia), and excess similarity (this last one is the thorniest, because it's a subjective thing to define what constitutes "excess" -- and I don't consider the "demanding candy" poems to have excess similarity at all). Haiku succeeds because we as readers often SHARE the same experience that the poem talks about. So, as an extension of that, it's no wonder than many haiku write about similar experiences, and even in similar ways. There's a limit, of course, but until that limit is reached, shared topics and similar expressions should be celebrated -- and that's what I would do with these "demanding candy" poems. By "committing deja-ku," I hope we can assume that Jennifer Sutherland meant just the "bad" kinds of deja-ku, but I hope anyone reading this will NOT treat "deja-ku" as a pejorative term.
5. A comment on this statement, also by Jennifer: "I think haiku writers need to be aware of searching for our own unique voice and with every haiku we submit for publication, ask ourselves the question, have I read this before?" I agree, yes, that we should think about whether our poems, when we submit them for publication, might be too similar to others or not. But I also wouldn't want anyone to be paralyzed by this concern. Which takes me to the start of what Jennifer says here, about "searching for our own unique voice." I don't recommend that at all, nor do I see it as a virtue. Voice is something that HAPPENS to you by being natural with your writing. If you express your own truth, in your own way, your voice will (much of the time) end up being unique. But TRYING to be unique is a sure-fire way of creating inauthenticity and fakeness, if you ask me. In response to the Modernist dictum to "make it new," Jane Hirshfield has countered by saying "Make it yours" -- to be yourself. That's what really matters. Sure, there's a point where what you wrote while being yourself may have already been said, and said similarly, by someone else, and if you don't catch such instances, editors can help, and readers too -- and I too welcome such feedback. But the time to think about this is NOT when one is writing. Anyway, yes, as Anna said, a certain amount of "haiku literacy" is helpful -- to know the literature as best as possible, at least its high points -- but no one person can ever keep up with it all, so we can only do our best.
6. Thanks, all, for the good words on my deja-ku essays on Graceguts.com.
Michael
