Re: My Father's House / gjd (for new comments)

On Fri, 7 Feb 2025 20:15:36 +0000, HarryLime wrote:
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On Fri, 7 Feb 2025 19:31:54 +0000, George J. Dance wrote:
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On Tue, 4 Feb 2025 11:29:25 +0000, W.Dockery wrote:
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George J. Dance wrote:

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My Father's House
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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!)
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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.
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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?
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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
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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.
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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.
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~~
George J. Dance
from Logos and other logoi, 2021

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Here it is, MFH.

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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:
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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.)

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No, Lying Michael: I have never said, or even "intimated" (!) that I was
pathological, lying, or
"abused as a child".

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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
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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.

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I haven't the time to go searching for the exact quote, but you had
initially maintained that it was "mostly autobiographical" or "mostly
based on your childhood," or similar words expressing the same thing.

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If you don't have time, get your NastyGoon to search for it. In this
case I have to call your bullshit. You claimed the poem was
"autobiographical", and I tried to explain to you the difference between
creative literature and autobiography - repeatedly. You believe it's
autobiographical because you said it was autobiographical, and for no
other reason.
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Eventually, you specified that only *one* passage in the portions of the
poem relating to your childhood had been inspired by something else.
IIRC it was the use of the term "boys can be such filthy things."

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More bullshit from HarryLiar. All the passages in the poem are about a
grown man returning to his childhood home, and his thoughts while he was
there. None of that was "inspired" by anything in my life.
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But why bicker over words.

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Because words have meanings: when you claim the poem is
"autobiographical", you're not just using a "word" but making a false
claim about the poem (and dishonestly trying to support your claim by
pretending that's a word I'd used to describe it).
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If you now wish to deny that any other portions of the poem were based
on your actual childhood experiences, please do so.

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Well, let's look at what happens in the poem.
S1 - the speaker revisits the house (after getting permission from
someone unspecified).
S2 - the speaker remembers his father building the house.
S3 - the speaker enters the back door, and remembers having to always
have had to use that door.
S4 - the speaker goes into the kitchen, and recalls having to wash
dishes.
S5 - the speaker looks out the kitchen window at the garden, and recalls
having to work in it when he'd rather be playing.
S6 - the speaker goes into the living room, and recalls not being
allowed to sit  wherever he chose.
S7 - the speaker thinks about his bedroom (but does not go there) and
remembers being sent there to be alone after dinner until bedtime.
S8 - the speaker continues to think about his bedroom, and remembers
having an  early bedtime and being subject to corporal punishment.
S9 - the speaker wishes he could burn the house down.
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None of those events happened to me, as I've told you repeatedly.
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The poem is meant to be a dramatic monologue, in the style of Browning
(His "My Last Duchess" is a good example), meant to get inside the
psychology of a  speaker or persona.

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You are defaming Mr. Browning, sirrah!

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Not at all. Calling "My Last Duchess" an autobiographical poem would
have defamed him; if you did that, you'd be accusing him of murdering
his wife. (Do you think "My Last Duchess" was autobiographical?)
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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).

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If the speaker (who we both know is George Dance)

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No; we both know that's a claim you (in your "Pendragon" sock) made
about the poem; and precisely what we're discussing. You actually
claimed that I broke into this house and tried to burn it down. Since I
don't "know" things that aren't true, I don't "know" that; only you
"know" it, simply because you said it previously.
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doesn't consider it
abuse, he should take the opportunity to explain why.

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Why should he? The speaker of the poem is not writing his
"autobiography" either; he's just remembering things, and sticking to
the facts.
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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.

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JFC! George.  There's no question that any of the above were forms of
abuse.

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No, HarryLiar: having to use a back door, and remove one's shoes; having
to wash dishes and do garden work; not being allowed on all the
furniture; having an early bedtime; and receiving corporal punishment
from one's father; are not all unquestionably abusive.
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That poor little boy had a bleak, loveless, existence filled with
verbal, emotional, and physical abuses.

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He may think he does, though that's not what he says. He's just relating
the facts as he remembers them. (Since he doesn't exist outside the
poem, there's no point in quibble over what he thinks; that's why I left
all that to the reader).
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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.

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Um... I was a child 50-60 years ago, and my father was physically
abusive (for a two year period after my mother's death) -- and I find
your story to be horrifying.

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Normal children may occasionally have been physically punished for
tracking dirt into the house, and such, but look at your poem... the
other children are outside playing while Little George is stuck inside
the house doing chores.

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I'm sure many "normal children" had to do chores when they'd rather be
playing with their friends. That wasn't only my experience, but that of
most of my friends, and they all seemed "normal" enough to me.