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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 02:10:06 +0000
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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?

😏