Another work by Eavan Boland that I would like to share

"Anorexic"

Flesh is heretic.
My body is a witch.
I am burning it.

Yes I am torching
ber curves and paps and wiles.
They scorch in my self denials.

How she meshed my head
in the half-truths
of her fevers

till I renounced
milk and honey
and the taste of lunch.

I vomited
her hungers.
Now the bitch is burning.

I am starved and curveless.
I am skin and bone.
She has learned her lesson.

Thin as a rib
I turn in sleep.
My dreams probe

a claustrophobia
a sensuous enclosure.
How warm it was and wide

once by a warm drum,
once by the song of his breath
and in his sleeping side.

Only a little more,
only a few more days
sinless, foodless,

I will slip
back into him again
as if I had never been away.

Caged so
I will grow
angular and holy

past pain,
keeping his heart
such company

as will make me forget
in a small space
the fall

into forked dark,
into python needs
heaving to hips and breasts
and lips and heat
and sweat and fat and greed.


In class we talked about how many poems written by Boland were often criticized, or 
at least noted, to be written almost autobiographically.  My point was because of 
our preconceived notion of writing about "what we know" that we are more likely to
assume that any poetry or prose is written with at least some truth to the author.
Though Anorexia is a very real and serious condition, I do not believe that Boland
was one of the women who has struggled or is struggling with this disorder.  The 
imagery in this poem is striking, and though partially disturbing I think would
benefit readers.  We get a better sense of how Eavan Boland uses her creative mind to
fill in what she does not know.  This idea is also presented in Object Lessons as she
tries to piece together what information she has of her grandmother while at the same
time creating details of which she has no proof... such as the red hat.