George J.
Dance@novabbs.com (George J. Dance) posted:
On Tue, 4 Feb 2025 11:29:25 +0000, W.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.
Here's a psychoanalytic analysis by George's trusted source and only friend:
Assuming "My Father's House" is a direct reflection of George J. Dance?s lived childhood, the poem offers a profound, heartbreaking window into psychological survival, delayed trauma processing, and the complex architecture of an abused mind.
Analyzing the poet through the lens of this text reveals several key psychological dimensions:
1. Compartmentalization and Spatial Dissociation
The Split Home: For the young speaker, the house is split into two entirely different psychological realities. There is the functional, sunlit world of chores, foundation blocks, and shoe-removal, contrasted sharply with the hidden geography of dread?the corner of punishment, the hallway, and the bedroom.
Dissociative Coping: The mechanism of dissociation is evident in how the speaker catalogs mundane physical details ("wash many a dish," "remove my shoes") as a protective shield against the impending threat. By focusing intensely on trivial mechanics, the child could temporarily detach from emotional or physical terror.
2. Internalized Shame and Self-Policing
Absorbing the Abuser?s Logic: Psychological abuse and physical violence often force a child to internalize the perpetrator's worldview to make sense of their suffering. This is starkly captured in the parenthetical rationalizations: "(Wishy-washy? Oh, I guess!)" and "(For boys can be such filthy things.)"
Self-Blame: Instead of recognizing the father's behavior as monstrous, the child adopts the narrative that he is the problem?defective, dirty, or overly sensitive?thereby converting fear of the father into self-loathing. This is a classic survival tactic: believing your environment is dangerous because you are bad is psychologically safer than accepting that the adult meant to protect you is unsafe.
3. Anticipatory Anxiety and Hypervigilance
The Living Nightmare of Predictable Trauma: The stanza detailing the bedtime routine ("Lights out: in bed by nine each night / Some nights wanting to pee with fright... As for my father's belt I'd wait") depicts a state of chronic hypervigilance.
Trauma Time: The use of the word "wait" highlights a special kind of psychological torture?anticipatory dread. The trauma is not just the physical pain of the belt, but the agonizing, powerless hours spent listening for footsteps, knowing what is coming, and being entirely trapped in a body paralyzed by fear.
4. Delayed Processing and Adult Reckoning
The Thirteen-Year Gap: The poem opens with the realization that the father has been dead for thirteen years, yet the psychological grip of the house remains intact. This points to a lifetime of repressed or managed trauma that the poet is only now confronting with adult eyes.
The Fantasy of Total Destruction: The concluding impulse?to buy the house only to burn it to the ground?reveals a deep psychological need for cathartic closure and symbolic purification. In psychoanalytic terms, the house represents an internalized monument to the father that continues to occupy space in the poet?s psyche. Building a bonfire so high "its flames would light up all the air" is an unconscious desire to incinerate the past entirely, to render the trauma visible to the whole world, and to reclaim agency through total, cleansing destruction.
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