deepundergroundpoetry.com
A Taste for Violence
Sometimes, I’m still
nine years old and stood
in the hallway with
my eldest brother,
as our other brother’s
knocked about upstairs.
My eyes are wet.
My eldest brother smirks
in that manner of his,
an attitude he’ll always take to life.
You could make it stop, he says.
Dad likes you best.
I’m thirty now. And living on my own,
for once, I’ve slowly reached
a place of understanding that
I don’t like fights, or even raised voices.
When I was five or so years old
I got lost at a holiday camp.
I’d been taken to a boxing match
and fled, upset by the violence.
Yet most of what I read is violent.
And I’ve a theory that
most horror writers are cowards.
You can’t imagine Hemingway
telling a decent ghost story.
He’d have fetched a blunderbuss
and filled the ghoulish troop with lead...
Sometimes, I’m still nine
and teary-eyed. Or five years old
and stricken with terror.
And that informs my taste,
just as a child raised in Africa
starts to like lions.
nine years old and stood
in the hallway with
my eldest brother,
as our other brother’s
knocked about upstairs.
My eyes are wet.
My eldest brother smirks
in that manner of his,
an attitude he’ll always take to life.
You could make it stop, he says.
Dad likes you best.
I’m thirty now. And living on my own,
for once, I’ve slowly reached
a place of understanding that
I don’t like fights, or even raised voices.
When I was five or so years old
I got lost at a holiday camp.
I’d been taken to a boxing match
and fled, upset by the violence.
Yet most of what I read is violent.
And I’ve a theory that
most horror writers are cowards.
You can’t imagine Hemingway
telling a decent ghost story.
He’d have fetched a blunderbuss
and filled the ghoulish troop with lead...
Sometimes, I’m still nine
and teary-eyed. Or five years old
and stricken with terror.
And that informs my taste,
just as a child raised in Africa
starts to like lions.
Published 8th Sep 2021
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Anonymous
- Edited 17th Jan 2024 00:45am
8th Sep 2021 4:22am
<< post removed >>
Anonymous
8th Sep 2021 8:11am
Things I like:
the line about Hemingway--lol funny;
the theory about horror writers--they've done studies (they? THEY?!) and discovered that there are biological / biochemical differences evident in the brains of people who like horror movies compared to those who don't;
starting in media res--I don't really understand what's going on, or what the italcized dialogue means, exactly, but maybe I don't need to;
the ending seems to suggest the writer, like a boy in Africa, was raised around violence.
While the speaker's aversion to violence is evident, the upbringing didn't necessarily come across as violent to this reader. Going to a box match when you're 5--OK, that's maybe a little edgy...Dad: "Well, it's time the little nipper got some good blood splatter ring-side seats!"
Advice for revision, if any: more focus on showing, less on telling / explaining.
Enjoyed!
An incredible poem about a killer: "Herbert White," by Frank Bidart....BEWARE! A hard-core poem, not for the faint of heart!
the line about Hemingway--lol funny;
the theory about horror writers--they've done studies (they? THEY?!) and discovered that there are biological / biochemical differences evident in the brains of people who like horror movies compared to those who don't;
starting in media res--I don't really understand what's going on, or what the italcized dialogue means, exactly, but maybe I don't need to;
the ending seems to suggest the writer, like a boy in Africa, was raised around violence.
While the speaker's aversion to violence is evident, the upbringing didn't necessarily come across as violent to this reader. Going to a box match when you're 5--OK, that's maybe a little edgy...Dad: "Well, it's time the little nipper got some good blood splatter ring-side seats!"
Advice for revision, if any: more focus on showing, less on telling / explaining.
Enjoyed!
An incredible poem about a killer: "Herbert White," by Frank Bidart....BEWARE! A hard-core poem, not for the faint of heart!
8th Sep 2021 8:22am
Thank you for the recommendation re Bidart! An issue I have with personal poems is that my frame of reference as per my personal experiences doesn’t need explaining to me, which means I sometimes forget to explain it to the audience, creating a rather confused mess. Thank you for your critique, it helped clarify some of that for me. x
