In Bidart’s bio, it says he succeeded in making Herbert White human. As disturbing as the poem was, I can’t help but wonder if Bidart was not just trying to allow us access into the head of a psychopath. Perhaps he was trying to highlight the lowest depravation and decay of society to remind us all that this still exists and can be found anywhere, even in the life of a seemingly average married mad with kids.

There is no argument that Bidart’s “Herbert White” is, although rather unspeakably disturbing, a masterpiece with regard to storytelling and humanizing what would be the personification of evil.  In this manner, it is definitely possible to say that the poem was a success, especially as Bidart’s attempt to describe the antithesis of himself. This was likely a successful adventure on a personal level, causing Bidart to fully understand himself before he could understand his opposite, but I wonder if it is an equal success in the grander scheme of things. That is, is there purpose in exposing people to something so dark and gruesome? Does the humanizing of Herbert White improve the reader’s capacity for understanding (or improve them in some other respect), or is that effect reserved for Bidart himself?

The different pieces between the two authors not only show how important word choice is in poetry, but also show how important visual aesthetics are. However, if read aloud, it becomes difficult to truly show the message within the visual aesthetics. WIth that said, which form of poetry should have more influence on the the reader: the written or spoken version?

Why did Bidart choose to write this poem from the perspective of a woman?  Anorexia nervosa and bulimia are more common among females; however, many men also suffer from eating disorders.  Did he choose to write the poem from a female point of view out of ignorance of eating disorders among males, or was there another reason for this decision?

Usually people think of may as an optimistic month and related to the arrival of spring. Why does he take the opposite side and said that it is “cruel” ?

Usually people think of may as an optimistic month and related to the arrival of spring. Why does he take the opposite side and said that it is “cruel” ?

This is such a disturbing and deep poem.  Where did Bidart get his inspiration for such a topic?  I feel like poets often comment on issues in society through their poems, so I’m wondering if “Herbert White” is a metaphor for something, or if the literal meaning is as Bidart intended it to be.

As a reader, do you think it’s hard to appreciate Frank Bidart’s ability to tell stories due to its content? Bidart claims he started writing poetry “trying to be ‘universal’ by making the entire poem out of assertions and generalization about the world—with a very thin sense of a complicated, surprising, opaque world outside myself that resisted the patterns [he] was asserting.” Do you think Bidart was successful i making his poems less general and narrow-minded after writing pieces such as this and Ellen West?

• Why did Frank Bidart choose to address this specific topic of anorexia in his poem? Did he feel like it was a topic that was commonly overlooked at the time and thus needed some attention brought to it?
• I know that Edmund White regarded the poem as “a work that displays Bidart’s talents at their most exacting, their most insistent” but was Bidart’s reason for writing the poem more personal than to display his talents? Did someone in his family possible suffer from anorexia and is that why he chose to write such a dramatic monologue.