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

On Tue, 11 Feb 2025 5:24:54 +0000, W.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.
George has stated that he intentionally structured his poem to present
an increasingly severe series of examples of strict parenting that could
be seen as abuse collectively, but not necessarily when viewed on an
individual basis.  He presents these potential "abuse" through the words
of an Unreliable Narrator (a man who may be undergoing psychiatric
care), and leaves it up to the reader to decide whether Little George
had been abused.
George's poems are the product of his intellect, rather than his
emotions (which is why I find them lacking in substance.  This poem was
conceived and constructed as an intellectual exercise similar to the
Stockton's short story "The Lady or the Tiger?" (which I also dislike). Unfortunately, George lacks the talent (which stems from the emotions)
to successfully bring it off.
His narrator appears emotionally detached until the final stanza, where
his pent up anger at his (what he takes to be abusive) father finally
erupts.  Unfortunately, the poem is presented in such a sing-song manner
that it ends up just coming across as weird.
For the poem to work, it should have been presented in a heartfelt,
emotional manner by the speaker.  Just because a speaker is intended to
be "unreliable," doesn't mean that the author shouldn't portray his
words in a deeply convincing manner.  George fails to do this, and the
is left with a light rhyme (it's much more a rhyme than it is a poem),
ironically(?) presented in the manner of a children's book that
incongruously tells a story of abuse.
George also stacks the deck in favor of actual abuse: his narrator is
hinted to be under psychiatric care, he suffers from pent up rage many
years later and presumably after his father's death (Dad no longer lives
in the house), presents no happy childhood memories, and provides no
acts on Little George's part that his nightly whippings would have been
punishment for.  IOW: In spite of George's professed intentions, the
reader has no reason to even suspect that Little George hadn't been
abused -- much less to draw their own conclusions about it.
But George Dance has repeatedly shown that his statements are not to be
trusted.  He will lie, falsely accuse (libel), misquote, and even create
false evidence in order to "win" in a flame war against those he
believes to be attacking him.  Since George incorrectly sees my
psychological reading as a personal attack, George has seen fit to
counter that attack by representing his poem predominantly as a work of
fiction, and by downplaying his former claims that it was mostly based
on his own childhood experiences.
Was George a victim of child abuse?  Obviously.
Has this abuse affected him psychologically in ways that still manifest
themselves today?  Equally obvious.
Having been unloved, and unjustly punished, by his parents, George is
unable to trust anyone.  He has also come to view others as potential
threats, and views any negative criticism he receives as a personal
attack.  He believes that it's him against the world, and sees
conspiracies against him where none exist.  And he counters these
perceived attacks with every deceitful trick in his book... which only
serves to turn others against him.
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