Several people have already pointed out that you cannot
copyright a title.
For confirmation, one need look no further than this year's
Shamus nominees.
Jamie Katz' nominated first novel is titled Dead Low Tide,
which title was
first used by John D. MacDonald in 1953.
As far as acknowledgement/permission to use a phrase that has
appeared
before is concerned, Block would be under no constraint to
acknowledge the
source of After The First Death -- if indeed he cribbed it
from the Thomas
poem -- because it is not so unique a phrase as to cause the
reader to
immediately think of the earlier work.
If he used the whole line ("After the first death, there is
no other.") as
an epigraph, acknowledgement should be made -- and perhaps
permission
sought, if the line were still protected by the copyright
laws. The same
goes for any textual reference that quotes the earlier
work.
PB
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