dublinka

Seymour Hoffman deservedly won the Best Actor Oscar, for his recent portrayal of Truman Capote. Interestingly, the real Capote, as a result of having published In Cold Blood, ended up reading poetry and prose to a 15,000 strong audience who had turned up, at a football field, to hear him speak. (a large audience to be sure, but not the biggest ever poetry audience for a football field). Understandably this is not in the movie though, because the film narrative pretty much ends before the reading. But more interestingly still, is the fact that also absent from the film, is the short poem, handed to him, before the execution, by murderer Perry Smith. It is unclear if Capote ever read the poem at the football field, but it perhaps encapsulates the mindset of a man, who in real life, remained what forensic psychiatry would call, an unrepentant psychopath. (Thanks Maebh.)


Perry Smith,

Oh would that I might raise my eyes above these walls
To cast my hopes to freedom's skies
And go on my merry way