In a nutshell, here is my copyright policy: copying is an act of love, please copy.

For those whose common sense may have been damaged through too much exposure to economic theory, here is a rational justification for such a policy:

More formally, my copyright policy is:

Unless otherwise noted, all of my poems on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Follow the link to read the license, it’s pretty easy to understand. Basically, it means you’re free to use, adapt, or re-mix them for purposes that aren’t primarily commercial, as long as you credit me as the author, and as long as you let others do the same with the result. What does “primarily commercial” mean? Well, I don’t know exactly. You can re-post it, you can tweet it, you can stick a couple poems in your article or your anthology (with attribution please) and I’d love to hear about it but you don’t have to tell me if you feel strongly about that sort of thing. And if you want to change or adapt a poem (you’re allowed, but caveat attribution and primarily commercial use), it’d be nice if you dropped me a line to let me know, I’d be interested to hear, but it’s really up to you.

I do ask that you not, you know, do something egregious like reprint my whole oeuvre and sell it and keep all the money, at least not without you ask me first. (First of all, if you think you can make money printing a book of poetry … well, someone should probably arrange an intervention. Secondly, just ask and I’ll probably say Yes. Are you kidding me?) If you do want to use a poem I’ve written for commercial purposes, or if you’re not sure if the way you want to use it is commercial or not… just ask. I’m easy.

Most of the images that appear along with the poems aren’t my work, except in the sense that some are collages I cobbled together out of other images. Most of them are either images I’m using under someone else’s Creative Commons license, or they’re in the public domain (in the United States, anyway). I’ve tried to indicate in every case the source of the image and the rights attached.

If you want to know more, post a comment and I’ll answer if I can!