[continued from previous message]

He has permission to leave the grounds during the day,
and (unrealistically) to visit his childhood home that is now occupied
by another family.

Yes, the idea that someone confined to a mental hospital would be given
a day pass to go off on a road trip by himself is very "unrealistic" and (while I liked it being as possibility) it's not a very logical
possibility. I believe you went for it because you wanted to and went on
to claim that Bob broke into the house, and you had to get rid of the
idea that he had permission to be there.

I believe that in my initial reading I overlooked the "they said" line's significance altogether, and that you had to point it out. I did think
that he had broken into the house.

"Grownup George" ends the poem by expressing his

wish that he would like to burn his father's house to the ground.

So Bob does. It's a very dramatic ending, which could make a reader
think that he was a psycho -- iff the reader had already decided he was
a psycho. Which is why I had Bob daydream about being able to buy the
house and burn it, rather than simply start looking for matches and
gasoline. As I said, I wanted to balance things and let the reader draw
her own conclusions.

The ending would have been far more powerful if it didn't have to
overcome the children's book style rhyme, and if Little George simply
struck a match to light up a cigarette and wondered about burning the
house down -- leaving it open-ended as to whether or not he does.

That's more constructive criticism, and not an attack on your work.

The framing story, is obviously fictional insofar as real life George
Dance is not living in a mental institution, and is not (to the best of
my knowledge) undergoing psychiatric care.

As I say, it's impossible to separate the two. The Bob who's walking
through the house, and looking out the window, is the same Bob who's remembering these things; and the fact that Bob's having those memories,
is the same fact as that he's remembering them. If you decided, from s1,
that he's escaped from a mental institution (which is what you meant by claiming it's "unrealistic" for him to have got permission to visit the house), then you'd go on to look for confirming evidence in s2-s8, which
is what it sounds like you did.

You seem to be saying that it's impossible to separate the fictional
George from his real life counterpart. I don't think this is what you
mean, but in context of the sentence you're responding to, that would be
the only way to read it.

It is, however, reasonable
to conclude that the author thinks of his childhood home as *his
father's house*

Yes, of course it was *his father's house*, just as the home I grew up
in was my own father's house. He built it with his own hands; but even
if he'd just bought it or even rented it, it would still be his, the
place he provided for his family to live. I'd consider a child's refusal
to acknowledge that fact to be a sign of rivalry and resentment, a
refusal to give one's father due credit.

I see that is being terribly wrong. It is *your* home. And, as such,
it is *your* house -- as your house is the physical structure where
you've made your home. My childhood home was either "My house" or "Our
house." There is no hint of rivalry or resentment there. The house
represents family, togetherness, equality among family members, and the
like. OTOH, "My Father's house" represents both detachment and
resentment, and the child wants to have no part of it.

and that he still harbors some anger toward his father
(even though his father is presumed to be deceased).

Bob certainly has unresolved issues with his father, but "anger" (much
less the desire for revenge "De." NastyGoon attributed to him) is a
matter of interpretation. OTOH, whether Bob's father is dead or not is
not a matter of interpretation; it's clearly stated in the poem.

I had to scroll up to find it.

I just don't find it memorable... probably because I don't find it
relevant to the analysis. Whether Dad is alive or not doesn't change
Grownup George's feelings toward him.

In short, the bulk of the narrative is based on real life memories from
its author's childhood.

All my poetry is "based" on my memories, but (as I've told you) my
memories include much more than direct experience). In this case, I
mainly used my own memories of my childhood because they worked. I
certainly had issues with my father as a teenager when I lived there,
and for a small time after I ceased to do so, and I wanted to make Bob's issues no different from mine.

Everyone's poetry is based on their memories to some extent. However,
when you set the poem in your house, and base the characters on yourself
and your family members (to some extent), the poem becomes *more* autobiographical than a poem you wrote set in a foreign land that you'd
never been to. Again, I point out the fact that "David Copperfield" was
a work of fiction -- but that the parallels to Dickens' own life make it autobiographical to a large degree. "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" is similarly based on people and events from Mark Twain's childhood --
although Twain has taken a great deal of artistic license regarding
them. It is not an autobiography (he wrote one of those as well), but
it is largely autobiographical. It also provides the reader (or
analyst) with a clear picture of *how* he looked back on his childhood.

Why then all the fuss about my having called it "autobiographical"?

Because you not only repeatedly insist that it's "autobiographical" when you've been told it wasn't, you try to draw conclusions about me from
it. (One particularly funny example of that, which I have to mention, is
a claim you made that I call you and "Dr." NastyGoon malicious trolls,
not because I perceive the two of you as malicious trolls, but because I perceive you as "parent figures" and I'm calling you both trolls just to somehow get revenge on my real parents. "Psychobabble", as I've said.)

There is nothing malicious in examining your story from an analytical standpoint. This is the approach that Marie Bonaparte took when writing
"The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe: A Psychoanalytic
Interpretation." Since stories (and narrative poetry) and dreams arise
from the same part of our psyche, it's not only natural, but can prove
highly rewarding, to approach fictional works as if they were the
author's dreams. And when those works have a clear autobiographical
basis (by which I mean "creative fiction" based on one's life -- like
"David Copperfield" and "Tom Sawyer"), the rewards from taking a psychoanalytical approach to them are even greater.

Yes, we were having a little innocent fun by addressing one another as
"Dr.," but there were hardly any malice to be found there. Nobody
thinks that you are actually our patient, George. Nor were we trying to convince anyone of such.

It's a typical Straw Man argument intended to divert the discussion from
examining the psychological aspects of the narrative, and to falsely
represent an attempt to provide an in-depth analysis of the poem as a
personal attack upon himself.

Not at all. Seeing the poem as "autobiographical" allows you to present
your so-called analysis of Bob as an analysis of me, and try to justify
your own "attacks" on me. As you often do, want to label the poem "autobiographical" (just as you want to call Bob "George") as if, a la Orwell, the words you use somehow prove your arguments.

Good old paranoid, perpetually persecuted George.

Please consider the above observation to be repeated.

And, since that last line of yours was what your "analysis" was meant to establish, and your only reason for your undertaking it in the first
place, it's a good place to conclude this post.

Not at all. No one is out to get you, George. That's what you need to understand.

I examined your poem from a psychoanalytical perspective as I feel it
that best means of approaching a poem about childhood abuse and how it
can have psychological repercussions in one's adult life (pent up rage,
wanting to torch one's childhood home, requiring psychiatric care). And
that was my only reason for doing so.

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