Let's Say Someone Has Experienced A Violent Trauma Or Betrayal: A Child Has Been Raped By A Parent Or Has Witnessed The Destruction Of Someone He Loves Or Has Been So Traumatized By The Possibility Of Beatings And Punishments That He's Afraid To Act. If The Trauma Is Great Enough, That Person's Life May Become Frozen, Emotionally Frozen Even Though He Still Gets Up In The Morning, Is Busy All Day, And Goes To Bed At Night. But There's This Empty Space That Begins To Fill With Rage, Rage Toward Everyone - The Perpetrator, The People In The World Who Haven't Suffered, Even Toward Himself. (174)

-Stephen Dobyns

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Let's Say Someone Has Experienced A Violent

Stephen Dobyns

Let's Say Someone Has Experienced A Violent Trauma Or Betrayal: A Child Has Been Raped By A Parent Or Has Witnessed The Destruction Of Someone He Loves Or Has Been So Traumatized By The Possibility Of Beatings And Punishments That He's Afraid To Act. If The Trauma Is Great Enough, That Person's Life May Become Frozen, Emotionally Frozen Even Though He Still Gets Up In The Morning, Is Busy All Day, And Goes To Bed At Night. But There's This Empty Space That Begins To Fill With Rage, Rage Toward Everyone - The Perpetrator, The People In The World Who Haven't Suffered, Even Toward Himself. (174)

Topic

Morning

Children

Betrayal

My Poems Always Begin With A Metaphor, But My Way Into The Metaphor May Be A Word, An Image, Even A Sound. And I Rarely Know The Nature Of The Metaphor When I Begin To Write, But There Is An Attentiveness That A Writer Develops, A Sudden Alertness That Is Much Like The Feel Of A Fish Brushing Against A Hook.

Writing

Sound

Hook