Jayson Blair's Poetic License

MAY 27--Yes, we've also had enough of this Jayson Blair punk. But TSG thought it was our duty to note what appears--to date, at least--to be the disgraced journalist's first piece of plagiarism. His victim? Jayson Blair. Seems that when he was a student at the University of Maryland in 1999, Blair tried his hand at poetry, posting three works on his student web site (which remains, at this writing, on one of the school's web servers). In the awful "ka-lei-do-scope in brown eyes," which you'll find below, Blair writes about some gal with "burnt sienna eyes," brown orbs that make colors dance and which make a guy want to "give love a chance." When Blair later penned the equally lousy "Heathery," he again pined about how lovely "burnt sienna eyes" cause "so many colors in my heart to dance." He added that those alluring peepers provide a "window into something special, that makes me want to give 'that word' a chance." Sorry, Yeats he ain't. We've also included another Blair poem, the odious "In Her Bed, Dreaming of You," so apologies for that as well. (3 pages)