Comments on: Seeing in the Dark

By: Shelley

Shelley — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I can understand your disinterest in hearing gory details — who wants to hear about other’s tragedy? But I think your desire, if that’s the property word, to see the ugliness gently wrapped in a ‘positive’ outcome and amidst lovely poetry does somewhat of a disservice to those who are still having difficulties with their own ’stories’. Should they just then keep their stories to themselves?

Sometimes there are no happy endings. And sometimes there is no poetry.

By: Burningbird

Burningbird — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Get away with my bad self. I must stop dropping dark bits of gloom wherever I go.

Actually, this was a wonderful posting Loren. And I’m looking forward to your new poet.

However, I really like Vietnamese food. One of my favorites.

By: Loren

Loren — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I agree that my aversion to violence is my problem, not the poet’s problem or the movie director’s problem, Shelley.

As a consumer, though, I get to choose what I see, and I particulaly dislike violence as a form of entertainment. I’ll have to admit, though, that I was impressed with the western Soldier Blue, which had some of the most graphic violence I have ever seen. But that violence was used as a means of protesting war, not glorifying it.

I suspect that all of us who went to Vietnam are still having some problems dealing with it, and I can’t imagine writing about it without dealing with those problems.

I certainly don’t demand that those problems be ignored or glossed over.

Personally, though, I’m still more interested in reading about someone who is overcoming them and how they overcame them than in watching a person be destroyed by them — not that both aren’t equally valid realities.