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From: mpsilvertone@yahoo.com (HarryLime)
Newsgroups: alt.arts.poetry.comments,rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: My Father's House / gjd (for new comments)
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2025 04:25:14 +0000
Organization: novaBBS
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On Mon, 10 Feb 2025 19:06:31 +0000, W.Dockery wrote:

> On Mon, 10 Feb 2025 18:52:17 +0000, HarryLime wrote:
>
>> Will Dockery wrote:
>>> 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.
>>>>
>>>> You're only here for the waffles.
>>>
>>>
>>> While you're only here to lie and misrepresent, Harry.
>>>
>>> And so it goes.
>>
>>
>> Are you denying that you posted each of the statements listed below,
>
> As part of a discussion with others.
>
> Context matters.

Not in this case.

How does it matter whether you were discussing the local Waffle Houses
with Zid in several different threads, or whether you launched several
Waffle-related threads on your own?

The point is that you were discussing Waffle Houses, repeatedly, in a
newsgroup about poetry.

Ergo, you were not here for the poetry (which you rarely discuss --
apart from giving a one or two word slurp to General Zid), but for the
conversations about Waffles, in which you discussed all of the local
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