“In my own correspondence with Kennard he suggested that the poem’s message is that “there’s more than one way to murder someone, and the narrator, in his vaudevillian, repetitive cruelty, is the real murderer.”1 So we are meant to see the moral shortcomings of both of the central characters, and the piece appears to make a case for moral relativism: the speaker’s moral pronouncements are comically undermined and the poem seems consistent with postmodernism’s refusal to construct a moral hierarchy.”
Also, this isn’t the full poem. There’s more, and it is really funny (and a bit bleak).
Okay this was very helpful, as was the rest of the poem, in understanding it. I mean, I think I need to read the full analysis while someone with a beret and very small sunglasses plays a bongo out of time in the background, every breath a lungful of stale cigarettes and spilt red wine, to really understand it… but it helps. Thank you! 😊
edit: I think my favourite is
‘I hope you’re not a murderer, too,’ I say.
‘One murderer in my life is quite enough for me.’
‘Actually,’ she says, quietly, ‘I think we’re all murderers.’
I brake for a red light. ‘That’s lucky,’ I say.
‘I imagine it would be difficult going out with a murderer
If you weren’t a moral relativist.’
That is very funny… though I can’t quite describe why. Absurdism, I guess.
Found some analysis on it:
https://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/4840
“In my own correspondence with Kennard he suggested that the poem’s message is that “there’s more than one way to murder someone, and the narrator, in his vaudevillian, repetitive cruelty, is the real murderer.”1 So we are meant to see the moral shortcomings of both of the central characters, and the piece appears to make a case for moral relativism: the speaker’s moral pronouncements are comically undermined and the poem seems consistent with postmodernism’s refusal to construct a moral hierarchy.”
Also, this isn’t the full poem. There’s more, and it is really funny (and a bit bleak).
Okay this was very helpful, as was the rest of the poem, in understanding it. I mean, I think I need to read the full analysis while someone with a beret and very small sunglasses plays a bongo out of time in the background, every breath a lungful of stale cigarettes and spilt red wine, to really understand it… but it helps. Thank you! 😊
edit: I think my favourite is
That is very funny… though I can’t quite describe why. Absurdism, I guess.