Eavan Boland

Contemporary Irish Writers

by Jody Allen Randolph

In this powerful and authoritative study Jody Allen Randolph providesthe fullest account yet of the work of a major figure in twentieth-century Irish literature as well as in contemporary women’s writing. Eavan Boland’s achievement in changing the map of Irish poetry is tracked and analyzed from her first poems to the present. The book traces the evolution of that achievement, guiding the reader through Boland’s early attachment to Yeats, her growing unease with the absence of women’s writing, her encounter with pioneering American poets like Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, and Adrienne Rich, and her eventual, challenging amendments in poetry and prose to Ireland’s poetic tradition. Using research from private papers the book also traces a time of upheaval and change in Ireland, exploring Boland's connection to Mary Robinson, in a chapter that details the nexus of a woman president and a woman poet in a country that was resistant to both. Finally, this book invites the reader to share a compelling perspective on the growth of a poet described by one critic as Ireland’s “first great woman poet.”

282 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Avryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

In "A Woman Painted on a Leaf," one of many excellent excerpts of Boland's poems within Randolph's book, Boland writes:

"A woman is inscribed there.

This is not death. It is the terrible
Suspension of life.

I want a poem
I can grow old in. I want a poem I can die in."

Randolph explores Boland's interest in ethical representations within poetic aesthetics as Randolph traces Boland's paralleling of canonical depictions of women in literature with the subjugation of Irish citizens under a British ruling class, but also with idealized visions of nationhood which Boland reads as limiting—to women and to nation. This book offers a great overview of Boland's poetry and prose work, as well as her connection with the first female president of Ireland, Mary Robinson, and her ongoing engagement with numerous women writers of and before her time.