Farah, Far From The Madding Crowd Poem by gershon hepner

Far from the madding crowd in Dorset
by Thomas Hardy brought to life
lived in our fancy Farah Fawcett,
sex symbol first, then battered wife,
and finally a victim to
a virus that, carcinogenic,
would kill her while in public view.
She hoped to be as telegenic
when chronicling her death as when
she in a bathing suit had posed
to be a poster-girl for men,
prepared to be no less exposed
in dying as she’s been when she
revealed her feral smile and thighs.
Surely Hardy would agree
that we for her should agonize
no less than it is proper we
should agonize when mourning Tess,
for whom her sex appeal had been
the asset leading to success,
but forfeited by death’s cruel lien.

Alessandra Stanley writes about Farah Fawcett in the NYT, June 27,2009 (“Farah Fawcett, a Sex symbol Who Aimed Higher”) :
A scrim of sadness covers Farrah Fawcett’s career. Her stardom traced that cautionary Hollywood arc: meteoric fame followed by years spent trying first to overcome it, then, too late, seeking to recapture it. Cancer interrupted Ms. Fawcett’s attempted comeback in 2006 and put her on a different, more didactic track — pursued by a careful-what-you-wish-for flurry of publicity. She put the incessant tabloid intrusion to the service of her illness, making a video diary of her struggle with anal cancer that, among other things, allowed her to feel that she had some control over the coverage. NBC, never shy about exploiting a celebrity tragedy, overproduced and overpromoted her film in “Farrah’s Story, ” but never made the public service point that, besides abstinence, the HPV vaccine is the most promising form of prevention against this type of cancer, which in most cases is sexually acquired…. Though, of course, it was her early work that kept her famous. Nobody in recent memory comes close to the giddy heights Farrah Fawcett reached in the mid-’70s with one season on “Charlie’s Angels” and That Poster. The pinup of Ms. Fawcett in a red one-piece bathing suit, tanned, head tossed, body lithe yet curvy, was a revelation. She looked delicious but also a little carnivorous, her gleaming white teeth frozen in a friendly but slightly feral smile. That poster ended up on every teenage boy’s bedroom wall and in the annals of pop culture — Farrah was the face, body and hair of the 1970s.

6/28/09