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From: will.dockery@gmail.com (W.Dockery)
Newsgroups: alt.arts.poetry.comments,rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: My Father's House / gjd (for new comments)
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2025 08:40:58 +0000
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On Mon, 10 Feb 2025 4:18:39 +0000, HarryLime wrote:

> On Mon, 10 Feb 2025 2:10:00 +0000, Will Dockery wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 9 Feb 2025 19:58:55 +0000, HarryLime wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, 9 Feb 2025 18:36:08 +0000, Will Dockery wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Fri, 7 Feb 2025 19:31:54 +0000, George J. Dance wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, 4 Feb 2025 11:29:25 +0000, Will Dockery wrote:
>>>>>> George J. Dance wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>> My Father's House
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> This is my father's house, although
>>>>>>> The man died thirteen years ago.
>>>>>>> They said it would be quite all right
>>>>>>> To take a drive to see it now.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Dad laid those grey foundation blocks
>>>>>>> And built the whole thing (from a box),
>>>>>>> Toiling after each full day's work.
>>>>>>> I helped, though I was only six.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Look, here's the back door I would use
>>>>>>> And here's where I'd remove my shoes
>>>>>>> To enter; there I'd leave my things
>>>>>>> And, when allowed, climb up these stairs.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> In this room I'd wash many a dish,
>>>>>>> Gaze out this window, and I'd wish
>>>>>>> To be so many other places.
>>>>>>> (Wishy-washy? Oh, I guess!)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Outside, the garden that he grew
>>>>>>> Where I would work the summers through,
>>>>>>> While watching my friends run and play
>>>>>>> Mysterious games I never knew.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> That room's all changed; oh, where is it,
>>>>>>> The one chair I was let to sit?
>>>>>>> (For boys can be such filthy things.)
>>>>>>> Which, the corner where boys were put?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Oh ... down that hall there is a room
>>>>>>> Where I'd be shut (as in a tomb)
>>>>>>> After the meal, to make no noise,
>>>>>>> To read or play alone, and then
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Lights out: in bed by nine each night,
>>>>>>> Some nights wanting to pee with fright,
>>>>>>> Face and pyjama bottoms down
>>>>>>> As for my father's belt I'd wait.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Oh, if I were a millionaire
>>>>>>> I'd buy my father's house, and there
>>>>>>> I'd build a bonfire, oh so high
>>>>>>> Its flames would light up all the air.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> ~~
>>>>>>> George J. Dance
>>>>>>> from Logos and other logoi, 2021
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Here it is, MFH.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thank you for reposting this poem of mine, Will. While it's true that it
>>>>> has been discussed a lot over the years, it also true that at least one
>>>>> person wants to discuss it now; and this would be the appropriate place
>>>>> to move those comments, rather than leaving them scattered all over the
>>>>> group. So let's start with this one:
>>>>>
>>>>> On Mon, 3 Feb 2025 16:15:27 +0000, Michael Monkey Peabrain (MPP) aka
>>>>> "HarryLime" wrote:
>>>>>> On Mon, 3 Feb 2025 13:06:00 +0000, George J. Dance wrote:
>>>>>>>> Why do you lie so much, George?
>>>>>>>> (That's a rhetorical question, as you've already intimated that your
>>>>>>>> pathological lying stems from you having been abused as a child.)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> No, Lying Michael: I have never said, or even "intimated" (!) that I was
>>>>>>> pathological, lying, or
>>>>>>> "abused as a child".
>>>>>
>>>>>> You wrote a "mostly autobiographical" poem detailing the abuses you
>>>>>> suffered as a child, George.  And you're demonstrating your pathological
>>>>>> obsession with lying in your trio of denials, listed above.
>>>>> https://www.novabbs.com/arts/article.php?id=15801&group=rec.arts.poems
>>>>>
>>>>> HarryLiar has manufactured yet another fake quote; I have never called
>>>>> this poem "mostly autobiographical" or autobiographical in many ways. I
>>>>> have distinctly told him in the past that, while some of the speaker's
>>>>> memories were based on my own childhood experiences, not all of them
>>>>> were; I was using them in a work of creative fiction, not an
>>>>> autobiography of any kind. So he lied and made up a fake quote to
>>>>> support his lie.
>>>>>
>>>>> The poem is meant to be a dramatic monolgue, in the style of Browning
>>>>> (His "My Last Duchess" is a good example), meant to get inside the
>>>>> psychology of a  speaker or persona. The speaker may have experienced
>>>>> his childhood as "abuse" - HarryLiar calls it that but the speaker
>>>>> doesn't. The memories of it, though, have stayed on his mind, and he
>>>>> wants to get rid of those memories (symbolized by burning down the house
>>>>> at the end).
>>>>>
>>>>> It's deliberately left to the reader to decide if the speaker actually
>>>>> had been abused by his father or not. I did structure it, for effect,
>>>>> from the least to the most abusive-seeming experiences; from having to
>>>>> use a back door and remove his shoes to enter the house, to doing
>>>>> household chores, to doing garden work in the summertime, to not being
>>>>> allowed to use some of the furniture, to having to stay inside alone at
>>>>> night and be in bed early, to being subjected to corporal punishment.
>>>>> Adding them together like that, it's easy enough to conclude that the
>>>>> father had been abusive; but I'll point out that all of those events
>>>>> were things children commonly experienced 50-60 years ago, and that none
>>>>> of them were commonly considered abusive.
>>>>
>>>> As Karla Rogers often reminded us:
>>>>
>>>> "Try not to mistake the speaker in the poem with the writer of the
>>>> poem."
>>>
>>> As I'd noted in my post, Karla's oft-quoted adage (oft-quoted by you,
>>> that is), is simply incorrect.
>>>
>>> My previous post explains why:
>>>
>>> "In fact, Karla's oft-quoted adage aside, one can *never* fully separate
>>> the two.
>>> For instance, all of the characters in any author's fictional novel are
>>> going to represent some aspect of the author.  Every poem stems from its
>>> author's imagination... regardless of what external persons and/or
>>> events might have inspired it.  Every literary work is similar to a
>>> dream construct in that regard; and like a dream construct, can be
>>> analyzed by a psychologist, a literary critic, or even the average
>>> reader.  Since "My Father's House" was based to a large extent on your
>>> own childhood experiences, it literally begs for a psychoanalytical
>>> reading."
>>>
>>> --
>>
>> You dispute the wisdom of the mighty Karla Rogers?
>
> Are you trying to troll

No, you're the super troll, Pendragon.

I'm here for the poetry.

😏