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    Last Rites and Wrongs
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    Last Rites and Wrongs
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    Last Rites and Wrongs
    Ebook292 pages2 hours

    Last Rites and Wrongs

    By Robert P. Hansen

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The following collection of stories and poetry explores the nether regions of the human psyche, that dismal, lonely place where morality takes a left turn into thanatos, the Freudian instinct toward death and destruction. Some of the works shy away from its borders like a swimmer dipping a toe in the pool to test the water, while others plunge willy-nilly into its abyssal depths, embracing it with the perverse satisfaction of a carefree cannonball from the highest diving platform. So, where did all this death and destruction come from? I was definitely influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, the poetry of Ai, the films of Hitchcock, and many others who have braved these wretched waters. But writing the poems was also cathartic.

    For Aristotle, catharsis occurs when Greek tragedy provides the audience with an opportunity to experience, through a vicarious empathic connection with the actors and chorus on the stage, the release of emotions that would be destructive to society. These poems provide us with an outlet for experiencing negative emotions in a non-threatening environment without the risks that would occur if we actually expressed them in society. A similar phenomenon is used today as a form of psychotherapy: art therapy.

    Art therapy is fairly simple: express through art (painting, writing, etc.) those things that are too painful or horrific to confront in the more traditional psychotherapeutic manner. It is indirect. It is utterly personal. It is a conversation with oneself about oneself. Freud would call it sublimation, redirecting the primal urges of the id into a socially acceptable form. By using art to explore and express emotions and memories, the patient can regain mental equilibrium. Writing is the medium that works best for me, and many of the poems in this collection have helped me to confront a number of troublesome issues from my past.

    The poems are loosely organized around six themes, the first of which revolves around war and its aftermath, both for society and for soldiers.

    Part 2 is the most controversial section of this collection, since many of the poems are persona poems. Persona poems are written in first person and many readers mistakenly assume the poem is about the poet. However, the poems in this section are not about me; I have never killed anyone nor do I condone killing. Violence is the most non-productive aspect of human nature, and in writing these persona poems, I allowed myself to explore the vile urges that (almost?) everyone has had at one time or another without acting on them. For a brief time, I adopted a vicious persona and wrote a poem from that persona’s perspective. It’s called role playing, which has also been used in psychotherapy to help develop empathy by providing insight into what it is like to be someone else.

    The central topic of Part 3 is abuse of various forms, some of which stem from my own experiences. I’ll leave it at that....

    Part 4 is, as its title suggests, disturbing—at least to others. For the individuals involved in various forms of sexual deviance, it may not be disturbing at all. And what about suicide? I have contemplated doing it once, but irony saved me. I was going to use a survival knife....

    Part 5 is all about the death of others, particularly the death of loved ones. We have ceremonies and funerals. We have stages of grief. We detach ourselves from it. We indulge ourselves in it. We seek sympathy. I write morbid poetry.

    Part 6 is rather benign in this context, since it deals primarily with the interaction between humans and nature, particularly when it ends in death -- which is perhaps the most natural of all events. Think of these poems as the anticlimax, one that allows the reader’s emotions to dwindle down to silence. Catharsis.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRobert P. Hansen
    Release dateJul 12, 2014
    ISBN9781311670823
    Unavailable
    Last Rites and Wrongs
    Author

    Robert P. Hansen

    Robert P. Hansen has taught community college courses since 2004 and is currently teaching introductory courses in philosophy and ethics. Prior to that, he was a student for ten years, earning degrees in psychology (AA, BA), philosophy (BA, MA-T), sociology (MA), and English (MA). Writing has been a hobby of his since he graduated high school, going through several phases that were influenced by what he was doing at the time.In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he played Dungeons and Dragons, read fantasy novels, and wrote fantasy short stories. He was also influenced by country music, particularly ballads, and wrote a number of short fantasy ballads that were later incorporated into the long poem "A Bard Out of Time."In the mid-1990s, college and work did not leave him much time for writing, and he mainly wrote poetry. It was during this period that he learned how to write sonnets and became obsessed with them. Since he was focused on developing the craft of poetry, it was a recurring theme in many of the poems from this period ("Of Muse and Pen"); however, as a student of psychology, psychological disorders were also of interest to him, and he wrote several sonnets about them ("Potluck: What's Left Over"). He also began to submit his poems for publication, and several appeared in various small press publications between 1994 and 1997.Most of the poems appearing in "Love & Annoyance" (both the love poems and the speculative poems) were written while he was a student (1994-2004), and relate to his romantic misadventures and his discovery of philosophy, the proverbial love of his life.The poems in "A Field of Snow and Other Flights of Fancy" do not fit into a specific period; they are humorous poems reflecting momentary insights or playful jests, which can happen at any time. However, most were written before 1999.In 1999, his interest shifted to writing science fiction short stories. Most of these stories were a response to a simple question: Why would aliens visit Earth? The majority of these stories appeared in magazines published by Fading Shadows, Inc. He later returned to this question in 2013 to finish his collection, "Worms and Other Alien Encounters."In 2003, he discovered the poetry of Ai as part of a project for a poetry workshop. Ai is known for her persona poems written from the perspective of serial killers, murderers, abusers, and other nasty characters. Her work inspired him, and he entered a dark period, writing several macabre persona poems similar to Ai's and compiling his thesis, "Morbidity: Prose and Poetry", which focused on death, dying, and killing. ("Last Rites ... And Wrongs" is an expansion of that thesis.)While a graduate student at the University of Northern Iowa, he twice won the Roberta S. Tamres Sci-Fi Award for his short stories "Exodus" (2003) and "Cliche: A Pulp Adventure Story" (2004).He did very little writing from 2004 to 2010; he was too busy developing or refining the courses he was teaching. From 2010 to 2013, he focused mainly on organizing, revising, and submitting the work he had already completed, which resulted in several poems and short stories being published. He wrote sporadically until the spring of 2013, when he finished the initial draft of his first full-length novel "The Snodgrass Incident," which expanded upon and integrated three short stories he had written in the fall of 2012.In the fall of 2013, he prepared several collections (poems and stories) for publication on Amazon and made a final revision of "The Snodgrass Incident." These were posted early in 2014, and he redirected his attention to other projects, including revising a short fantasy novel and a collection of suspense-oriented fantasy/horror/science fiction stories.

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