Poetry
Ellen West's life influenced poet Frank Bidart to write the following poem entitled Ellen West.
I love sweets,—
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ would be dying on a bed of vanilla ice cream ... But my true self and effortless gestures, the sort of blond
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ —My doctors tell me I must give up
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ WILL NOT ... cannot. Only to my husband I’m not simply a “case.” But he is a fool. He married Why am I a girl? I ask my doctors, and they tell me they But it has such
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I even feel like a girl. Now, at the beginning of Ellen’s thirty-second year, her physical condition had deteriorated still further. Her use of laxatives increased beyond measure. Every evening she took sixty to seventy tablets of a laxatives, with the result that she suffered tortured vomiting at night and violent diarrhea by day, often accompanied by a weakness of the heart. She had thinned down to a skeleton, and weighed only 92 pounds. About five years ago, I was in a restaurant,
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ not married, and often did that ... —I’d turn down I’d allow myself two pieces of bread, with
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ with a book, both in the book
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ and woman, both elegantly dressed,
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ with sharp, clear features, a good
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ in front of you, rubbing cold cream
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ And he,—
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ so attractive. I didn’t know why. He was almost a male version
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I had the sudden, mad notion that I —Were they married?
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ They didn’t wear wedding rings. Their behavior was circumspect. They discussed —How could I discover?
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ arrived, I noticed the way each held his fork out for the other to taste what he had ordered ...
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ again and again, with pleased looks, indulgent
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ much too much for just friends ... —Their behavior somehow sickened me; the way each gladly I knew what they were. I knew they slept together. An immense depression came over me ... —I knew I could never happily myself put food into another’s mouth—; I knew that to become a wife I would have to give up my ideal. Even as a child, is for one’s middle to thicken— as happened to my mother.
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ At twelve, pancakes I shall defeat “Nature.” In the hospital, when they January 16. The patient was allowed to eat in her room, but comes readily with her husband to afternoon coffee. Previously she had stoutly resisted this on the ground that she did not really eat but devoured like a wild animal. This she demonstrated with utmost realism.... Her physical examination showed nothing striking. Salivary glands are markedly enlarged on both sides. January 21. Has been reading Faust again. In her diary, writes that art is the “mutual permeation” of the “world of the body” and the “world of the spirit” Says that her own poems are “hospital poems ... weak—without skill or perseverance; only managing to beat their wings softly.” February 8. Agitation, quickly subsided again. Has attached herself to an elegant, very thin female patient. Homo-erotic component strikingly evident. February 15. Vexation, and torment. Says that her mind forces her always to think of eating. Feels herself degraded by this. Has entirely, for the first time in years, stopped writing poetry. Callas is my favorite singer, but I’ve only I’ve never forgotten that night ... —It was in Tosca, she had long before
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ When her career began, of course, she was fat, enormous—; in the early photographs, The voice too then was enormous—
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ high spirits, too much health ... But soon she felt that she must lose weight,— was obliterated by her body,
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ four months, she lost at least sixty pounds ... —The gossip in Milan was that Callas But of course she hadn’t.
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ was her soul ... —How her soul, uncompromising,
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ revealing this extraordinarily —But irresistibly, nothing also began to change: at first, it simply diminished
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ shrill, unreliable—at last, —No one knows why. Perhaps her mind, that to struggle with the shreds of a voice must make her artistry subtler, more refined, —Perhaps the opposite. Perhaps her spirit to embody itself, to manifest itself, on a stage whose mechanics, and suffocating customs, —I know that in Tosca, in the second act,
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ and in torment, bewilderment, at the end she asks,
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ “Art has repaid me LIKE THIS?”
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ autobiography—
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ virtuosity miles distant from the usual soprano’s
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ of virtuosity without content ... For they have already, within a few years, Whatever they express
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ —She must know that now
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ dramaturgy of her recordings have just slightly become those of the past ... —Is it bitter? Does her soul that she was an idiot ever to think
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ —Perhaps it says: The only way is not to have a body. When I open my eyes in the morning, my great
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ —I know that I am intelligent; therefore the inability not to fear food
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ dread of eating; hunger which can have no cause,— half my mind says that all this
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ for days on end —Then I think, No. The ideal of being thin conceals the ideal
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ This wish seems now as much a “given” of my existence as the intolerable —But then I think, No. That’s too simple,— without a body, who can
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ acting; choosing; rejecting; have I
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ —But then again I think, NO. This I is anterior
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ ... trying to stop my hunger with FOOD
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ March 30. Result of the consultation: Both gentlemen agreed completely with my prognosis and doubted any therapeutic usefulness of commitment even more emphatically than I. All three of us are agreed that it was not a case of obsessional neurosis and not one of manic-depressive psychosis, and that no definitely reliable therapy is possible. We therefore resolved to give in to the patient’s demand for discharge. The train-ride yesterday
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ were ordinary people: a student; they had ordinary bodies, pleasant faces;
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I was surrounded by creatures with the pathetic, desperate the student was short, the woman showed her gums when she smiled, the child —I was hungry. I had insisted that my husband After about thirty minutes, the woman to quiet the child. She put a section
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ The piece fell to the floor. —She pushed it with her foot through the dirt My husband saw me staring —I didn’t move; how I wanted
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ shove it in my mouth—; my body at me,—
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ back to me ... I didn’t move. —At last, he bent down, and
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ He looked away. —I got up to leave the compartment, then his eyes
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ —I’m sure I saw— disappointment. On the third day of being home she was as if transformed. At breakfast she eats butter and sugar, at noon she eats so much that—for the first time in thirteen years!—she was satisfied by her food and gets really full. At afternoon coffee she eats chocolate creams and Easter eggs. She takes a walk with her husband, reads poems, listens to recordings, was in a positively festive mood, and all heaviness seems to have fallen away from her. She writes letters, the last one a letter to the fellow patient here to whom she had become so attached. In the evening she takes a lethal dose of poison, and on the following morning she was dead. “She looked as she had never looked in life—calm and happy and peaceful.” Dearest.—I remember how
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ they rested, sitting down to joke or talk, I circled yet afraid to rest You and, yes, my husband,— have by degrees drawn me within the circle; I am grateful. But something in me refuses it. —How eager I have been but each compromise, each attempt heightens my hunger. I am crippled. I disappoint you. Will you greet with anger, or the news which might well reach you
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Alternative rock band Throwing Muses recorded a song called "Ellen West" on their 1991 album The Real Ramona.
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Famous quotes containing the word poetry:
“Firm in our beliefs without dismay,
In any game the nations want to play.
A golden age of poetry and power
Of which this noondays the beginning hour.”
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