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

As noted, I opened this thread mainly to collect comments on the poem
that I found scattered in other threads. Here's one I found foay, in a
thread called "NastyGoon lifts a line".
On Sat, 8 Feb 2025 1:30:57 +0000, Michael Monkey Peabrain aka
"HarryLime" wrote:

Let's search for the opening line of Mr. Dance's most well known poem:
"This is my father's house, although The man died thirteen years ago."
The search returned a whopping 10 pages of results.

snip
It sounds like HarryLiar forgot to put quotes around the line; but
that's not relevant here. This one is, though:

Here's another example where the father is the speaker's biological one:
it's the title of a song by Bruce Springsteen.  Bruce's relationship
with his father in the song appears to be a loving one (and one can even
draw a parallel between  the relationship of Little Bruce and his
biological to one between Grownup Bruce and God).  Again, a different
message, but the Title is *exactly* the same.

It sounds as if HarryLiar has never heard or listened to the song;
which allows one to evaluate his interpretation of it in context.
In fact, the speaker (who does appear to be Springsteen) and his father
have experienced conflict ("hard things that pulled us apart") and
are estranged (torn "from each other's hearts"). Then one night he
dreams of his father, and resolves to return to the house to reconcile
with him and get closure.
<q>
I awoke and I imagined, the hard things that pulled us apart
Will never again, sir, tear us from each other's hearts
I got dressed and to that house, I did ride
</q>
However, it is too late; the father "doesn't live [t]here anymore"
(presumably he's dead), and no reconciliation is possible.
The speaker's and his father's "sins lie unatoned".
https://genius.com/Bruce-springsteen-my-fathers-house-lyrics

>
Of course I would never so much as intimate that George Dance lifted the
title of his poem from Mr. Springsteen. I would not even imply this
when I think it highly probable that Mr. Dance has some familiarity with
Mr. Springsteen's song.  Since most titles are intended to call
attention to a poem's topic, there are many poems and songs that have
the same titles.

Indeed I 'm familiar with the song; it's actually a favorite of mine.
And I'm happy to acknowledge the similarities between his work
and mine -- both are about a speaker unable to get closure with his
father, because his father is gone -- though the details of the two
works are completely different. And although I did not consciously
think of the song when I wrote the poem, when I did realize the
titles matched I thought it worked very well as an allusion.
So I don't mind HarryLiar saying that I "lifted" the title from
Springsttenm, provided that he not does to on to claim, a la
NastyGoon, that I "plagiarized" it.