Path: news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.quux.org!news.nk.ca!rocksolid2!i2pn2.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail 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, 19 Feb 2025 13:01:55 +0000 Organization: novaBBS Message-ID: <45441d9d3494d2b27d3566f76ec1a0a0@www.novabbs.com> References: <97db0c3aeb33a7b97dc54cdfd5661e52@www.novabbs.com> <345f74d5cefb9cac73440cb316d0f3ab@www.novabbs.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: i2pn2.org; logging-data="780243"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@i2pn2.org"; posting-account="9yNNWN6S3jCL2bQghupeZ7yt9QQF3aIiWb2guQimaIw"; User-Agent: Rocksolid Light X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 4.0.0 X-Rslight-Site: $2y$10$VJIdEgyNF8yBzG9Qv7GSqu53bAJa4PsjiD2sTytkTovL9BcSoNNMW X-Rslight-Posting-User: e04a750cbe04de725ce24a46bcc3953c76236e3b On Tue, 11 Feb 2025 18:35:18 +0000, W.Dockery wrote: > On Tue, 11 Feb 2025 15:32:43 +0000, HarryLime wrote: > >> On Tue, 11 Feb 2025 5:24:54 +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. >>> >>> I grew up in that era, very different ideas on punishing children in >>> those years. >>> >>> Here I am with my family on Christmas 1967: >>> >>> https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1MwsSqpqfU/ >> >> By the 1960s it was becoming increasingly frowned upon to beat a child >> with a belt. But be that as it may. > > Beatings of that sort continued on through the 1970s, all through my > high school years. > > I think by the 1980s this was phased out, since neither of my children > were ever punished in this way in school. No one was punished with beatings in school in the 1970s. At least not in my home state of New Jersey. Students were not allowed to be physically punished in any way. I'm told they do things differently in "the deep South," but any teacher beating a child (or even a high school student) with a belt would have been arrested for child abuse. --