VEGANGELICA

Hi, Crowe,
As I continue to read through your poems/lyrics, the one I find myself gravitating to especially is "Little Child." One reason is that I like the subject matter. It explores a basic ethical issue (and one I think about a lot as a vegan!), which is this: when do we decide to kill another being and how do we rationalize doing so? Plus, the poem shows how creepy it is when a person *does* consider this Utilitarian calculation. (The ethical theory of Utilitarianism seeks the greatest good for the greatest number of people, and so can be used to justify killing a few to save a large majority).

The poem is disturbing, I feel, because the person singing actually appears to believe that one can tell by looking at a baby that he will grow up to be a "sociopath." Of course, if we assume that what is predicted about the child is true, then the song deals with an ethical question similar to the one people ask about Hitler: "If you met Hitler in a room before he had a chance to organize the Holocaust, would you kill him if it were true that this would save the lives of millions of people?" This ethical question is very important, because people ask versions of it all the time...for example, George W. Bush must have asked a related question when he (horrifyingly, I feel) decided to wage a preemptive war on another country (Iraq), leading to millions of people becoming refugees and over 100,000 people dying!

I also like the poem's structure, which has the repetition/verse form that I feel would easily convert into a song. (The poem also looks rather like a pacifier!) The details add meaning. For example, I feel the Persian rug symbolizes that this child was from a loving, well-to-do family and thus, probably, never suffered from material want or lack of love often assumed to be at the root of someone "going bad."

I especially like the section that could be screamed angrily (when the sociopathic teenager is screaming at the parents). I can imagine screaming the lines I've italicized below:

Plus, I like the ironic humor that is in a lot of your pieces (like the one about having a relationship with someone's door), such was when you write in "Little Child":

You wrote recently that all your poems, with the exception of Emma Bear, involve you using your imagination to think up the scenarios. So, I thought you might want to know that, from everything I've read about children who grow up to be abusive toward humans, hurting/killing non-human animals is truly often where they start. I volunteered for a year with children "recovering" from drug addiction and behavioral issues, and recall hearing a 14-year-old laugh about a cat who scratched him. He laughed because of how he got "revenge": he put the cat in a bag and lit it on fire. The cat ran hopping and burning across the lawn. So, I feel it is very realistic when you write:

Finally, I like the way the poem ends with the repetition of the somber chorus (which has slightly different wording each time):

I like the fact that the poem raises this question again and again, but does not answer it and thus forces the readers to try to answer the question themselves.
--Erica