Directing Herbert White: Poems
Franco’s commitment to poetry has heretofore been expressed in films. He played Allen Ginsberg in Howl; created and starred in The Broken Tower, a film about Hart Crane; and made a short film based on Frank Bidart’s searing poem about a necrophiliac child-murderer, “Herbert White.” This volume’s title poem is an homage to Bidart, who, like Franco, grew up in California, albeit when, as Franco imagines, being gay was a “secret so dark that he could tell no one.” As in his novel, Actors Anonymous (2013), Franco—protean, determined, sly, and armed with five MFAs, including one in poetry—writes audaciously about the perversities of Hollywood and how it decimates the vulnerable. He portrays such movie-industry casualties as Lindsay Lohan, River Phoenix, and Sal Mineo, and reveals his own grappling with the largesse and absurdities of celebrity and, ultimately, a confusion of selves: “This fake me is louder / Than the real me, and he / Is the one everyone knows.” Franco’s bold and magnetic examination of life in the mirrored hall of make-believe and fame taps deeply into our collective mythology. --Donna Seaman