Eavan Boland Anorexia Essay

In comparing two poems on Anorexia such as late poets Eavan Boland and Louise Glück, we look into the lives of two individuals who struggled with eating disorders. While eating disorders are still a problem in the world today we don’t often see the emotional and mental taxes up close and personal. With these two poems on Anorexia, we get to see perspectives of the way women view their bodies that aren’t easily accessible. In reading the two works, there are striking differences and they merit thorough analysis. To start off her poem “Anorexic”, Eavan Boland compares her body to that of a witch—someone who is to be punished, “My body is a witch / I am burning it” (Line 2-3), “How she meshed my head in half-truths of her fevers” (Line 7-9).

Later in the poem, it says “the interfering flesh / that I would sacrifice / until the limbs were free” (Line 11-13), shows that her idea was to have limbs that were simply skin and bone and nothing added to them. It is evident in this poem that the goal is not to starve herself to death, but rather to have no added weight on her body—to exude her idea of ‘perfect’. Potentially, she could want to avoid maturing as well since maturing into womanhood means added weight such as breasts as referred to in line 9. In this poem death is seen nearly as something that might happen, but it is not the main concern—rather the main concern is to make sure they lose the extra weight they think they have because that would mean being imperfect. We see this as Glück ends the writing with “it is the same need to perfect, / of which death is the mere byproduct” (Line 16-17). Death is a mere byproduct. Death is not the consequence in Glück’s perspective. The consequence in this scenario is being overweight, the struggle of developing, and/or not being comfortable in her own