this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
2 points (100.0% liked)

Poetry

230 readers
7 users here now

A community for discussion and sharing of poetry.

I'll populate this sidebar with more pizzazz, but for now let’s just get the lights on in here.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
snakesnakewhale@sh.itjust.works
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
Southsamurai@reddthat.com
2
One of my favourites — The Murderer by Luke Kennard (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 9 months ago by funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works to c/poetry@sh.itjust.works
3 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] chumbalumber@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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).