NYCTom has made a good point. I don't want to play oneupmanship in the victimization game, and I wish that Tim hadn't done so. Tim speaks for himself, not for me. He, Marilyn and I have all enjoyed lives of privilege, compared with most in this world. It ill becomes any of us to dwell on supposed victim status.
The reason why Nelson's poems seem ultimately bloodless, despite their sometimes bloody subjects, is that they derive from a fashionable stance more than personally- felt experience.
While it is possible to write passionately of other lives and other times without experiencing them, a writer is more likely to get a striking result by going against the grain. Perhaps Marilyn ought to try writing in the voice of William the Conqueror or Lucretia Borgia.
A.S.
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