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In a Time of Violence: Poems
The publication of Eavan Boland's previous book, Outside History: Selected Poems 1980-1990 , established Boland as a significant presence in the contemporary American poetry world. This, her seventh book, continues to mine what she has termed "the meeting place between womanhood and history."
80 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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About the author
Eavan Boland
84 books162 followersBorn in Dublin in 1944, Eavan Boland studied in Ireland, London and New York. Her first book was published in 1967. She taught at Trinity College, University College Dublin, Bowdoin College, the University of Iowa, and Stanford University. A pioneering figure in Irish poetry, Boland's works include The Journey and other poems (1987), Night Feed (1994), The Lost Land (1998) and Code (2001). Her poems and essays appeared in magazines such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Kenyon Review and American Poetry Review. She was a regular reviewer for the Irish Times. She was married to the novelist Kevin Casey.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 44 reviews
October 16, 2024
One of my favorite collections by Eavan Boland, In a Time of Violence weaves shadow bridges for those people whom history has forgotten. For readers unfamiliar with the phrase shadow bridge, this is Boland's term for a vehicle which triggers a speaker's recognition of something or someone forgotten. For example, in one of the most memorable pieces, "In a Bad Light," the stitch work on a formal, Victorian dress for a southern bell serves as an impetus to transport the speaker back in time as a seamstress, an Irish seamstress "sewing a last sight of shore" as she works in terrible conditions to buy her way to what she hopes might be a new life. "Woman Painted on a Leaf," a poem which on the surface seems to describe a gold broach in the shape of a leaf, reminds the speaker of how for much of human history, mythology has trapped us in roles defined by draconian laws for gender and beauty. The woman painted on this broach is frozen, pleading for "the horrible suspension of life" to end, begging readers to allow her to age. "That the Science of Cartography is Limited" tells readers that when they come to Ireland and take out their tourist maps, "the line which says woodland and cries hunger" will never be represented because the famine roads were never recorded. In fact, famine roads in and of themselves are a topic conveniently left out of most history books entirely. Most were never completed, and "where [the starving Irish] died, there the road ended."
There are so many poignant and prescient works in this collection. It serves as a reminder to all of us that we need to be vigilant, in the hustle and bustle of our every day lives...we need to look and to see those groups of people all around us who deserve to have their voices heard and acknowledged, not just because we should all be working toward a more accepting, tolerant future--though of course we should--but also because, as Boland's collection asserts, our survival itself relies upon diversity, not sameness... and so does our own humanity.
This is a collection I would love to see taught more often to both aspiring young poets and literature students. Boland's poems are extremely accessible, but they offer layers and layers of meaning. I have never read another poet of her generation who could turn a more impactful phrase with such deceptively simple diction, and I will always admire her skill.
There are so many poignant and prescient works in this collection. It serves as a reminder to all of us that we need to be vigilant, in the hustle and bustle of our every day lives...we need to look and to see those groups of people all around us who deserve to have their voices heard and acknowledged, not just because we should all be working toward a more accepting, tolerant future--though of course we should--but also because, as Boland's collection asserts, our survival itself relies upon diversity, not sameness... and so does our own humanity.
This is a collection I would love to see taught more often to both aspiring young poets and literature students. Boland's poems are extremely accessible, but they offer layers and layers of meaning. I have never read another poet of her generation who could turn a more impactful phrase with such deceptively simple diction, and I will always admire her skill.
May 1, 2018
I am rather fond of this one:
The Pomegranate - by Eavan Boland
The only legend I have ever loved is
the story of a daughter lost in hell.
And found and rescued there.
Love and blackmail are the gist of it.
Ceres and Persephone the names.
And the best thing about the legend is
I can enter it anywhere. And have.
As a child in exile in
a city of fogs and strange consonants,
I read it first and at first I was
an exiled child in the crackling dusk of
the underworld, the stars blighted. Later
I walked out in a summer twilight
searching for my daughter at bed-time.
When she came running I was ready
to make any bargain to keep her.
I carried her back past whitebeams
and wasps and honey-scented buddleias.
But I was Ceres then and I knew
winter was in store for every leaf
on every tree on that road.
Was inescapable for each one we passed.
And for me.
It is winter
and the stars are hidden.
I climb the stairs and stand where I can see
my child asleep beside her teen magazines,
her can of Coke, her plate of uncut fruit.
The pomegranate! How did I forget it?
She could have come home and been safe
and ended the story and all
our heart-broken searching but she reached
out a hand and plucked a pomegranate.
She put out her hand and pulled down
the French sound for apple and
the noise of stone and the proof
that even in the place of death,
at the heart of legend, in the midst
of rocks full of unshed tears
ready to be diamonds by the time
the story was told, a child can be
hungry. I could warn her. There is still a chance.
The rain is cold. The road is flint-coloured.
The suburb has cars and cable television.
The veiled stars are above ground.
It is another world. But what else
can a mother give her daughter but such
beautiful rifts in time?
If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift.
The legend will be hers as well as mine.
She will enter it. As I have.
She will wake up. She will hold
the papery flushed skin in her hand.
And to her lips. I will say nothing."
The Pomegranate - by Eavan Boland
The only legend I have ever loved is
the story of a daughter lost in hell.
And found and rescued there.
Love and blackmail are the gist of it.
Ceres and Persephone the names.
And the best thing about the legend is
I can enter it anywhere. And have.
As a child in exile in
a city of fogs and strange consonants,
I read it first and at first I was
an exiled child in the crackling dusk of
the underworld, the stars blighted. Later
I walked out in a summer twilight
searching for my daughter at bed-time.
When she came running I was ready
to make any bargain to keep her.
I carried her back past whitebeams
and wasps and honey-scented buddleias.
But I was Ceres then and I knew
winter was in store for every leaf
on every tree on that road.
Was inescapable for each one we passed.
And for me.
It is winter
and the stars are hidden.
I climb the stairs and stand where I can see
my child asleep beside her teen magazines,
her can of Coke, her plate of uncut fruit.
The pomegranate! How did I forget it?
She could have come home and been safe
and ended the story and all
our heart-broken searching but she reached
out a hand and plucked a pomegranate.
She put out her hand and pulled down
the French sound for apple and
the noise of stone and the proof
that even in the place of death,
at the heart of legend, in the midst
of rocks full of unshed tears
ready to be diamonds by the time
the story was told, a child can be
hungry. I could warn her. There is still a chance.
The rain is cold. The road is flint-coloured.
The suburb has cars and cable television.
The veiled stars are above ground.
It is another world. But what else
can a mother give her daughter but such
beautiful rifts in time?
If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift.
The legend will be hers as well as mine.
She will enter it. As I have.
She will wake up. She will hold
the papery flushed skin in her hand.
And to her lips. I will say nothing."
November 15, 2024
Beautifully done.
February 19, 2022
I adore Boland's work. That's it. That's all there NEEDS to be said, however, I'll say some more: fantastical, tragic, painful, illustrative, and incredibly human: Eavan Boland manages to capture Ireland's humanity unlike anyone else has or ever will.
October 22, 2016
I really enjoyed these poems! The images, the cadence, the references to myths, even just the experience of reading poetry from a poetry book and not in isolation from each other, it was all just lovely.
January 7, 2018
In a Time of Violence, by Eavan Boland, 1994. From the beginning of this book, Irish poet Eavan Boland wants to get at real things. She quotes Plato from the Republic – “an imitative poet implants an evil constitution” at the start of her seven poem sequence “Writing in a Time of Violence.” Her prefatory poem “The Singers”, one of my favorites from this book, speaks of a revelation
After which
Every day was still shaped by weather,
But every night their mouths filled with
Atlantic storms and clouded over stars
And exhausted birds.
And only when the danger
Was plain in the music could you know
Their true measure of rejoicing in
Finding a voice where they found a vision.
The singers’ mouths filled not with words, but with the real things – storms and clouds and birds.
This is followed by poems like “The Death of Reason” and “In a Bad Light”, in which the objectification and oppression of women are paired with the growing violence in Ireland, and in America. Portraiture in late 1700s London, and fashion in 1860s St. Louis are “for that moment, beautiful”, but the fires in rural Ireland and the looming Civil War in the U.S. are real and show the shallowness of such things.
Throughout this volume, there is a constant tension between art and language, which freeze their objects, and reality, which is alive, hard, and leads to death. Boland sometimes pairs this insight with her own aging as a woman.
Her poem “What Language Did” ends
“Write us out of the poem. Make us human
In cadences of change and mortal pain
And words we can grow old and die in.”
I am looking forward to reading more of Boland’s work.
As a side note, I think I met Boland when I was in Ireland. She taught at the School of Irish Studies at University College, Dublin when I was there for a semester in 1979. If I remember right, she was one of the profs who went with the students for three days to County Clare – a memorable trip.
After which
Every day was still shaped by weather,
But every night their mouths filled with
Atlantic storms and clouded over stars
And exhausted birds.
And only when the danger
Was plain in the music could you know
Their true measure of rejoicing in
Finding a voice where they found a vision.
The singers’ mouths filled not with words, but with the real things – storms and clouds and birds.
This is followed by poems like “The Death of Reason” and “In a Bad Light”, in which the objectification and oppression of women are paired with the growing violence in Ireland, and in America. Portraiture in late 1700s London, and fashion in 1860s St. Louis are “for that moment, beautiful”, but the fires in rural Ireland and the looming Civil War in the U.S. are real and show the shallowness of such things.
Throughout this volume, there is a constant tension between art and language, which freeze their objects, and reality, which is alive, hard, and leads to death. Boland sometimes pairs this insight with her own aging as a woman.
Her poem “What Language Did” ends
“Write us out of the poem. Make us human
In cadences of change and mortal pain
And words we can grow old and die in.”
I am looking forward to reading more of Boland’s work.
As a side note, I think I met Boland when I was in Ireland. She taught at the School of Irish Studies at University College, Dublin when I was there for a semester in 1979. If I remember right, she was one of the profs who went with the students for three days to County Clare – a memorable trip.
August 13, 2021
The last third of this collection, I am sure, I will re-read time and again.
December 2, 2014
A resonant, hauntingly lyrical book of poems.
Some favorite moments:
"And only when the danger
was plain in the music could you know
their true measure of rejoicing in
finding a voice where they found a vision."
(from "The Singers")
"...we will live, we have lived
where language is concealed. Is perilous.
We will be--we have been--citizens
of its hiding place. But it is too late
to shut the book of satin phrases..."
(from "Writing in a Time of Violence")
"And I make this mark:
A woman in the doorway of her house.
A river in the city of her birth.
The truth of a suffered life.
The mouth of it."
(From "Anna Liffey")
"This is what language did to us. Here
is the wound, the silence, the wretchedness
of tides and hillsides and stars where
we languish in a grammar of sighs,
in the high-minded search for euphony,
in the midnight rhetoric of poesie.
We cannot sweat here. Our skin is icy.
We cannot breed here. Our wombs are empty.
Help us to escape youth and beauty.
Write us out of the poem. Make us human
in cadences of change and mortal pain
and words we can grow old and die in."
(From "What Language Did")
"I saw my mother weep once. It was under
circumstances I can never, even now,
weave into or reveal by these cadences.
As I watched, and I was younger then,
I could see that weeping itself has no cadence.
It is unrhythmical, unpredictable and
the intake of breath one sob needs to
become another sob, so one tear can succeed
another, is unmusical: whoever the muse is
or was of weeping, she has put the sound of it
beyond the reach of metric-makers, music-makers."
(From "We Are the Only Animals Who Do This")
Some favorite moments:
"And only when the danger
was plain in the music could you know
their true measure of rejoicing in
finding a voice where they found a vision."
(from "The Singers")
"...we will live, we have lived
where language is concealed. Is perilous.
We will be--we have been--citizens
of its hiding place. But it is too late
to shut the book of satin phrases..."
(from "Writing in a Time of Violence")
"And I make this mark:
A woman in the doorway of her house.
A river in the city of her birth.
The truth of a suffered life.
The mouth of it."
(From "Anna Liffey")
"This is what language did to us. Here
is the wound, the silence, the wretchedness
of tides and hillsides and stars where
we languish in a grammar of sighs,
in the high-minded search for euphony,
in the midnight rhetoric of poesie.
We cannot sweat here. Our skin is icy.
We cannot breed here. Our wombs are empty.
Help us to escape youth and beauty.
Write us out of the poem. Make us human
in cadences of change and mortal pain
and words we can grow old and die in."
(From "What Language Did")
"I saw my mother weep once. It was under
circumstances I can never, even now,
weave into or reveal by these cadences.
As I watched, and I was younger then,
I could see that weeping itself has no cadence.
It is unrhythmical, unpredictable and
the intake of breath one sob needs to
become another sob, so one tear can succeed
another, is unmusical: whoever the muse is
or was of weeping, she has put the sound of it
beyond the reach of metric-makers, music-makers."
(From "We Are the Only Animals Who Do This")
July 27, 2017
Poetry helps me find meaning in a chaotic world that seems to care little for women. Eagan Boland explores what it means to be a woman searching for words that shape our sense of place, our place in history, and our lives in the present.
Although published in 1994, this volume features complex poems that juxtapose present moments with the past to question both language and historical memory. These poems resonate w/ me in this moment in time, a time of collective historical amnesia.
"We are sewing coffin ships. / And the salt of exile. / And our own / death in it. For history's abandonment / we are doing this. And this..." write Boland in the poem "In a Bad Light."
Like Boland, "I want a poem / I can grow old in. / I want a poem I can die in."
But for now I'll settle for verse that comforts me in this search, poetry that offers respite from life's complexities.
Although published in 1994, this volume features complex poems that juxtapose present moments with the past to question both language and historical memory. These poems resonate w/ me in this moment in time, a time of collective historical amnesia.
"We are sewing coffin ships. / And the salt of exile. / And our own / death in it. For history's abandonment / we are doing this. And this..." write Boland in the poem "In a Bad Light."
Like Boland, "I want a poem / I can grow old in. / I want a poem I can die in."
But for now I'll settle for verse that comforts me in this search, poetry that offers respite from life's complexities.
July 16, 2016
I think my favorite so far. It contains the heart piercing “Legends” dedicated to her youngest daughter. “The Singers” breathes a sense of place held by women in that place that is both harsh and honored. The whole first section by the same title as the book is haunting; one feels how a forest, a doll museum holds the anguish of the heart that remain long after the deeds of history. Each poem has its own weather. In “What Language Did,’ time stands still yet for the immortal legendary figures but moves on for humans, and like the legends cry to become human and die. Such anguish.
September 28, 2015
Same old problem with those blasted stars! I actually read this a couple of weeks ago when I was in Dublin for 2 days as it seemed a good book to take with me as I'd not yet read it, and I wasn't disappointed. It's a slim volume, and not recent, but very much well worth reading, with some excellent and very thought-provoking poems.
November 3, 2014
This book was my introduction to Boland's subtlety and skill. Her poems are quietly powerful and nuanced. Her language is radiant.
February 21, 2016
Outstanding voice.
November 25, 2018
In a Time of Violence is a collection of poetry by the Irish poet, Eavan Boland. Eavan Boland’s poetry is rooted in both America and Ireland. She reaches both into the present and the past. Her poetry grows from both Irish and American landscapes.
I’ll confess that at times I was a bit impatient with this work and I felt that in certain places she could have used more precise words to describe things. At others, it is profound. The final words from the poem “Love” is are among these saying, “But the words are shadows and you cannot hear me. You walk away and I cannot follow.”
I would have loved to see these profound moments throughout the whole entire work and I couldn’t always enter into the imagery because it was two-dimensional at times. I almost put the book down, but I was rewarded with bright flashes of genius.
I’ll confess that at times I was a bit impatient with this work and I felt that in certain places she could have used more precise words to describe things. At others, it is profound. The final words from the poem “Love” is are among these saying, “But the words are shadows and you cannot hear me. You walk away and I cannot follow.”
I would have loved to see these profound moments throughout the whole entire work and I couldn’t always enter into the imagery because it was two-dimensional at times. I almost put the book down, but I was rewarded with bright flashes of genius.
February 1, 2022
Tonight the air smells of cut grass.
Apples rust on the branches. Already summer is
a place mislaid between expectation and memory.
I read Eavan Boland’s poetry collection Against Love Poetry: Poems last year and since then I’ve been addicted to her writing. In A Time Of Violence contains some incredibly beautiful, yet painfully sad poetry. My favourite from this collection is definitely Moths, but I also adore In A Bad Light, The Dolls Museum In Dublin, This Moment, A Sparrow-Hawk In The Suburbs, Anna Liffey, Story and Time And Violence.
Apples rust on the branches. Already summer is
a place mislaid between expectation and memory.
I read Eavan Boland’s poetry collection Against Love Poetry: Poems last year and since then I’ve been addicted to her writing. In A Time Of Violence contains some incredibly beautiful, yet painfully sad poetry. My favourite from this collection is definitely Moths, but I also adore In A Bad Light, The Dolls Museum In Dublin, This Moment, A Sparrow-Hawk In The Suburbs, Anna Liffey, Story and Time And Violence.
December 16, 2020
"In the end
It will not matter
That I was a woman. I am sure of it.
The body is a source. Nothing more.
There is a time for it. There is a certainty
About the way it seeks its own dissolution.
Consider rivers.
They are always en route to
Their own nothingness. From the first moment
They are going home. And so
When language cannot do it for us,
Cannot make us know love will not diminish us,
There are these phrases
Of the ocean
To console us.
Particular and unafraid of their completion.
In the end
Everything that burdened and distinguished me
Will be lost in this:
I was a voice."
It will not matter
That I was a woman. I am sure of it.
The body is a source. Nothing more.
There is a time for it. There is a certainty
About the way it seeks its own dissolution.
Consider rivers.
They are always en route to
Their own nothingness. From the first moment
They are going home. And so
When language cannot do it for us,
Cannot make us know love will not diminish us,
There are these phrases
Of the ocean
To console us.
Particular and unafraid of their completion.
In the end
Everything that burdened and distinguished me
Will be lost in this:
I was a voice."
November 25, 2021
Make of a nation what you will
Make of the past
What you can—
There is now
A woman in a doorway.
It has taken me
All my strength to do this.
Becoming a figure in a poem.
Usurping a name and a theme.
*
In the end
Everything that burdened and distinguished me
Will be lost in this:
I was a voice.
*
Write us out of the poem. Make us human
in cadences of change and mortal pain
and words we can grow old and die in.
Make of the past
What you can—
There is now
A woman in a doorway.
It has taken me
All my strength to do this.
Becoming a figure in a poem.
Usurping a name and a theme.
*
In the end
Everything that burdened and distinguished me
Will be lost in this:
I was a voice.
*
Write us out of the poem. Make us human
in cadences of change and mortal pain
and words we can grow old and die in.
April 6, 2024
no es un 2⭐ por la calidad en si del libro sino por mi experiencia lectora. es muy difícil que yo disfrute la poesía y pese a que en este libro hay poemas que me han gustado, en general me he aburrido. Imagino que si fuera irlandesa o conociera la historia de Irlanda lo hubiera disfrutado mucho más, porque intuyo que tiene muchas referencias que yo no he podido captar.
August 1, 2020
I’ve been struggling with poetry recently and keep zoning out, but that’s not Eavan Boland’s fault! This is a lovely collection of poetry. I especially liked The Pomegranate and In Which the Ancient History I Learn is Not My Own, and I adore the way she names her poems!
November 18, 2025
Its most likely because I am a mother to a daughter myself... But J feel myself in these poems. The push and pull and love and loss of watching them grow. The Pomegranate specifically speaks so well to this.
December 27, 2017
Superb poems
May 9, 2020
Beautiful, brisk, attentive.
May 30, 2020
Beautiful.
January 7, 2021
The wonders she can perform with words and images. Most moving are her trenchant renderings of the everyday life of women against a backdrop of personal and political distress.
February 7, 2021
"When I came here
I had neither
Children nor country.
The trees were arms.
The hills were dreams."
A nice poetry collection.
I had neither
Children nor country.
The trees were arms.
The hills were dreams."
A nice poetry collection.
December 6, 2021
Exceptional, brave, luminous, profound...
April 30, 2022
She was wonderful, an excellent writer of place: the emotion of it; the emotions felt in it; the lives there in contained. Everything is personal but public.
September 8, 2023
This is not death. It is the terrible
Suspension of life.
Suspension of life.
October 16, 2024
She is marvelous. The long poem, "Anna Liffey, here, is worth the price of admission all by itself.
Displaying 1 - 29 of 44 reviews