The Historians: Poems

by Eavan Boland

Winner of the 2020 Costa Poetry Award

A forceful and moving final volume from one of the most masterful poets of the twentieth century. Throughout her nearly sixty-year career, acclaimed poet Eavan Boland came to be known for her exquisite ability to weave myth, history, and the life of an ordinary woman into mesmerizing poetry. She was an essential voice in both feminist and Irish literature, praised for her "edgy precision, an uncanny sympathy and warmth, an unsettling sense of history" (J. D. McClatchy). Her final volume, The Historians , is the culmination of her signature themes, exploring the ways in which the hidden, sometimes all-but-erased stories of women’s lives can powerfully revise our sense of the past. Two women burning letters in a back garden. A poet who died too young. A mother’s parable to her daughter. Boland listens to women who have long had no agency in the way their stories were told; in the title poem, she writes: "Say the word history : I see / your mother, mine. / … / Their hands are full of words." Addressing Irish suffragettes in the final poem, Boland promises: "We will not leave you behind," a promise that animates each poem in this radiant collection. These extraordinary, intimate narratives cling to the future through memory, anger, and love in ways that rebuke the official record we call history.

Genres: Poetry, Ireland, Irish Literature, Nonfiction, Womens, Feminism, Female Authors

80 pages, Hardcover

First published October 13, 2020

About the author

Born 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.

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can’t think of a better St. Patrick’s Day tribute than to pause and think about poet Eavan Boland for a moment. Just after finishing up the edits for what would be her final book of poetry, this volume titled The Historians, Boland passed away in April 2020. ‘In the end,’ she wrote in one of my favorite poems of hers, Anna Liffey, ‘Everything that burdened and distinguished me / Will be lost in this: I was a voice.’ And what a voice she was, blending memory and history with wave after wave of brilliant verse that championed the struggles of women while carrying the rhythm of Irish history. It is strange to think of this as a posthumous collection, and I’ll never forget learning of her passing. It was a few weeks into the 2020 Stay at Home period and I remember her death hitting me quite hard out of nowhere so I took my dog on a long, long walk where I spent much of it thinking about poetry and the first time I set foot in Ireland, a copy of her A Poet's Dublin one of the only things I had in my bag for the trip. So now when I think of Ireland, I always think of Boland. And I’d like to kick off this review with some lines from the poem in here, For a Poet Who Died Young,’ as, while she was 75 when she passed, reading it makes me think of her:

Your words helped me live.
I was younger then. Your ghost is still young.
Is still dead,

Your words disturbed my earth. They changed my mind.
Whatever a dead poet could have I wish for you.
But a living woman

is what you should have been. So many years later
forgive the fact my words unlike yours
offer little comfort and less peace.

Boland is selling herself short in the end here because wow do her words always hit so well. There is a New Collected Poems poems from 2005 that I highly recommend though it is badly in need of updating (same with the wonderful New Selected Poems from 2013) as Boland continued putting out hit after hit after those, like A Woman Without a Country: Poems and this, her final work. She published her first collection while still a student, and went on to teach in many prestigious literature departments such as Trinity College in Dublin where I was visiting my partner, and also was the editor for the amazing Poetry Ireland Review. She’s fantastic.

Complicit

When we were young we praised Saint Brigid's Day
as if we gave her credit for
the end of our island winter.

I used to think it was our innocence.
Now I think we were the Angelus
I heard when I was still at boarding school,

listening at the window, the music of a bell
acting on the air, collecting
lilac, ozone, light from the water--

each element eliciting meaning
for the other, each arriving at
my windowsill. Inseparable. Complicit.

Like many of her collections, the ideas of memory and history come together with personal stories here, and The Historians looks at the women of the past, from activists to her own grandmother, as a way to rethink about Irish history. ‘Silence was a story, I thought, / on its own and all to itself,’ she writes, and Boland has always ensured the voices of women would not go silent in the halls of history. The final section of the book is one longer poem, Our Future Will Become the Past of Other Women, which had been by United Nations to honor the centenary of women exercising their right to vote in Ireland in 1918.

Our future will become
The past of other women.
Our island that was once
Settled and removed on the edge
Of Europe is now a bridge
To the world.

It is a lovely poetic monument to the women, who’s names are listed in the poem to remember that they ‘vote in the shadow of their past / They vote in the light of what will be / Their new nation.’ Boland also remembers moments of her own life, stitching it into the history she creates around her, and some of my favorite passages are her remembering her own act of poetry, such as in Three Crafts:

On wild nights when the trees are getting ready
To become memories of themselves
No one will remember I remember

stumbling into this art when I was young.
How often I wrote late at night hoping
as window latches broke loose and the wind

rose and undid all the leaves that what I wrote
might be capable of learning from
an ocean cadence. Its fall, its rise and fall.

This is a lovely, intimate collection, moving from poems of St Stephens Green, to lamplighters ‘leaving behind him / the gift of shadows,’ a poem about a library in 1964, and always a love letter to Ireland. Perhaps the best is the titular poem, which I’ll post in full as I believe it speaks for itself and is, certainly, the heart of this collection and one that will grace the pages of any selected poetry collections of Boland that will likely come about. She was an incredible poet, one of my favorites, and this was a lovely, final farewell.

The Historians

Say the word history: I see
your mother, mine.
The light sober, the summer well over,
an east wind dandling leaves, rain stirring at the kerb.

Their hands are full of words.
One of them holds your father’s journal with its note
written on the day you were born.
The other my small rhymed scratchings, my fervent letters.
Before the poem ends,
they will have burned them all.

Now say the word again. Summon
our island: a story that needed to be told –
the patriots still bleeding in the lithographs
when we were born. Those who wrote that story
laboured to own it.

But these are women we loved.
Record-keepers with a different task.
To stop memory becoming history.
To stop words healing what should not be healed.

It is cold. The light is going.
They kneel now behind their greenhouses,
beneath whichever tree is theirs.

The leaves shift down.
Each of them puts a match to the paper. Then
they put their hands close to the flame.
They feel the first bite of the wind.
They lace their pages with fire. I finish writing.

[Henk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Irish identity, a sense of belonging and the transient nature of memory turning into history, erasing many experiences of women along the way, dominate this poetry bundle
All I know is
some days
should simply be.
Not remembered.
- Be

The Historians: Poems is a bundle that feels carefully written, melancholic but also hopeful and sometimes proud.
The poem on 100 women suffrage is particularly good:
https://www.irishtimes.com/history/ce...
Freedom is not abstract, is not a concept,
Is not ethic only nor a precept.
It can also be a hope raised, then defeated,
Then renewed.
…
They vote in the shadow of their past.
They vote in the light of what will be
…
All those who had faith
That voices can be raised.
Can be heard. All those who saw their hopes
Become the law. All those who woke
In a new state flowering
From an old nation and found

Justice no longer blind.
Inequity set aside.
And freedom redefined.
- Our future will become the past of other women

But there are more poems from Eavan Boland to enjoy:
You died young. Your words helped me live.
I was younger then. Your ghost is still young.
Is still dead.

Your words disturbed my earth. They changed my mind.
Whatever a dead poet could have I wish for you.
But a living woman

is what you should have been. So many years later forgive the fact my words unlike yours offer little comfort and less peace
- For a poet who died young

Ireland comes back a lot as a theme, lovingly for the most part, at least in so far it talks of the country, not necessarily the people:
Ireland
how could I ever have loved you
if I never believed you?
- Broken

[Ken · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unfortunately, with the passing of Eavan Boland, this will be the last we hear from one of Ireland's best poets. This small collection of deceivingly simple poems treat on history, family, and country.

Here's short poem I liked when I read it and liked even more as I reread it:


Complicit

When we were young we praised Saint Brigid's Day
as if we gave her credit for
the end of our island winter.

I used to think it was our innocence.
Now I think we were the Angelus
I heard when I was still at boarding school,

listening at the window, the music of a bell
acting on the air, collecting
lilac, ozone, light from the water--

each element eliciting meaning
for the other, each arriving at
my windowsill. Inseparable. Complicit.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

A calming set of poems about history (familial vs. wider/national, e.g. suffragism) and Ireland. While perfectly pleasant, they will not stick in the mind. The only one that stood out was about rain.

[Rosamund · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the particular joys of poetry for me is reading poems that seem simple but reveal rich depths. Boland's work often has that quality.

[Alva McDermott · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most accessible and enjoyable poets of Irish modernism. Ripperino

[Fern Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I always knew rain was a dialect I could listen to on a winters night”

This is Eaven Boland’s last book of poetry and my first introduction to her work. I loved it, so much so I’ve immediately gone and reserved all her other books at the library. Her writes largely about, as the title suggests, history. Personal history, cultural history, family history, history of place and memory- what is remembered, what is forgotten and what out of choice is discarded. I especially loved the poem about rain that conjured up great imagery and summed up living in a rainy climate perfectly.

[Bandit · Rating 2 out of 5]

Outside of musings about rain – and let’s face it, if an Irish national can’t muse about rain, who can – this collection seemed too slight, too insubstantial, too unmemorable. It went by very quickly and vanished into ether. That’s about all I can say about it now.

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eavan Boland's final collection is assured, tender, and suffused with both melancholy and hope. She writes about aging, renewal, loss, family, and the women who have been excluded to the margins of history. She picks up on themes of feminism and national identity which have long been central to her work, and the final poem Our Future Will Become the Past of Other Women is a moving testimony to the Irish suffragists of 1918 and an exploration of our particular place and time. In this volume, Boland's writing employs short lines and careful patterning of syllables to create poems that flow easily into the mind, but remain in the reader's thoughts for a long time. I read this collection twice in quick succession -- Boland's work here is very accessible, but it's also thought-provoking and evocative, and made me want to re-experience it as soon as I had read it. She is astute and subtle, such as in The Break-Up of a Library in an Anglo-Irish House in Wexford: 1964:

the end of empire is and will always be
not sedition nor the whisper
of conspiracy but that

slipper chair in the hallway
that has lost the name
no one will call it by again.

Sometimes I find Boland's interest in empire and the history of Irish Nationalism doesn't serve her poetry, making work feel flat or repetitive, but other times, such as in the quoted section, it's surprising and moving. Some of this collection also reflects on Boland's own writing life, such as in Margin, in which she describes

[...] the region
I found for myself,
described in my own language,

so I could stand if only for one moment,
on its margin.

This seems like a remarkably minor way to describe such an accomplished career, particularly coming from Boland, who I admire for her authority and sense of self-importance. However, it also captures something very moving and unexpected about the nature of writing itself and what poetry means. Another section, called Three Ways in Which Poems Fail, describes Virgel, a monk, and a storm, and the different ways these figures create and in which they influence writing. She also looks at different women in history, from grandmothers to debtors to painters, and look at her own experiences of ageing. At best, Boland's work is vivid, nuanced, and asks questions that are impossible to voice in any language other than poetry. I found this collection very moving, and it makes clear yet again what a huge lose she is.

[Note: I read the Carcanet edition, which is not listed on GoodReads. The Carcanet preserves the American spellings of the Norton edition, which I found a bit jarring for pieces so rooted in Ireland.]

[Carlos Valladares · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the biggest regrets and misses of my life so far: not taking more creative writing classes in undergrad, not passing by eavan’s office or stopping to have a chat with her all the time i saw her and i could, not reading her poetry until now.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

My new favorite poet.

[Kendrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This final, posthumous collection is the first time I'm encountering Eavan Boland's work. It was recommended to me because I had asked a poet friend where he had found a particular poem, "This Garden". An incredibly strong poem that I fell in love with, Eavan uses "This Garden" to touch upon many of her lifelong topics - memory, place, and who has the right to ascend into history. Here's the poem, reproduced in full:

This Garden

Awake late at night what I see is
faces, faces, their radiance. And realize
I will never see them again. Then

I come to this place, to this garden:
A stretch of grass, fog-wet at dawn
reaching past hutch wire, sweet pea,

the chiming of small apples falling, still
falling by which time it will be twilight.
At the end of the path is a gate

creaking open on flickering
teatime windows and the Wicklow hills,
and beyond their blueness the horizon

of a new nation: and here at least,
those mean consonants, those actors of injury-
Moneta, Mnemosyne-are nowhere to be seen.

Where I stand there is no then or once.
It is September. Crab apples are littered
in the grass, their skin torn by wild beaks.

It is September. In another hour, I will be born.
Until then I cannot be alive.
Until then I have no need to remember.

Many of Boland's other poems in this collection respond similarly. However, I found myself distant from the collection, despite liking many of the poems and revisiting it multiple times. Part of my dissatisfaction comes from poems with shorter lines, which I have never really enjoyed. Part of it comes from the low number of poems. I felt at times that I was reading a chapbook's worth of poems, rather than a full-length collection. When I read a longer work, I expect a fuller range of expression and argument, and this just didn't quite seem to pull together. That said, many of these poems would do beautifully as standalone pieces, and for that, I am grateful for getting this book.

[Ada · Rating 4 out of 5]

Té to de clàssic.

[Penelope · Rating 4 out of 5]

Winner of the 2020 Costa Poetry Award. Delightful and moving collection of poetry. Very Irish with descriptions of the countryside and the weather. Although I read it one sitting I plan to revisit and re read this little gem many times.

[heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

I miss her. This final collection is one very good reason why.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favourite poet. I don’t have the words for how brilliant she is and how often I will return to her work.

[Sally Boots · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another book that seemed okay but got so much better when I went over it with my beloved poetry reading group.

[Bohemian Book Lover · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having come across the impressive poem entitled 'Scribe' on social media, I had to get my hands on the book from where it was excerpted from, THE HISTORIANS.

History and Memory; Ireland and Irishness; Womanhood and Woman's Rights; Freedom and Justice; Light and Dark; Language and Poetry are the tapestries with which the late Eavan Boland weaves on the loom of her last collection of poems.

Precise and minimalistic in tone and technique, her poetry contains a quiet yet dynamic, experiential, impressionable quality which says just enough on the margins of the ineffable in her dialogue and confrontation with history, history-makers and historians. I savored my rereadings of most of the poems. I found a few more favorites to add to 'Scribe, but overall it was a satisfactory poetry collection to get through.

[Valerie P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful, small anthology of poems. I didn't understand them all, but really loved quite a few of them. I wasn't familiar with this poet, but was grateful for the chance to learn more about her works and also her very interesting life.

[gabby .__. · Rating 4 out of 5]

i guess i'm on a poetry kick? 4.5 stars (loved the first two parts but the "margin" section lost me a little). would deffo keep this book in my pocket if i could.

[Gregg Hower · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boland's language is so clear and fluent that I need to remind myself to slow down and absorb the richness and complexity of her themes. In this volume Boland is concerned with how the experience of women is left out of the official historical record, and how even women become complicit with the erasure as they learn from a narrowly focused record. In the poem "Lost" Boland suggests that much of the loss is casual, as even a writer who journals will leave things out, things assumed to be burned into memory, but for which, years later, the details are lost.

[Liam Malone · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading a few poems the feeling I am reading Eavan Boland poetry awakes in me. Her style and diction are timeless and well define her poetry. This final collection stands out because it is typical of her past poetry. About her daughters, Ireland, Easter 1916, women in general, gardens & flowers & trees. The sea and Vikings. Dreaming and walking around. You left us too early at age 72. My Mother left last year too at age 92, but her life was glorious. Dan White my finest friend left us at age 57 on December 22 last year. Too much death.

[Marta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boland is a poet I did not know before now, and I’m so glad I stumbled upon this collection. Her tropes of colouring in and painting as a metaphor for the shaping of historical significance and revolution is absolutely striking in its simplicity. Similarly, her use of the themes of light and darkness. My personal favourites in this collection were The Lamplighter, For a Poet who Died Young, Rain, Translating the Word Home, the Just Use of Figures and of course, Our Future Will Become The Past of Other Women.

[Leif · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eavan Boland's poetry was always a delicate balance between the piercing exhumation of memory and the nostalgias of materialist solace. In this, her last collection of poems, she continues her argument with history but it feels less pressing as her own concerns move more toward the ephemeral and the repeated notes which she has struck more convincingly elsewhere. A tender, quiet farewell from this master poet.

[Rosemary · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of poems celebrating history, women, Ireland, the sea, memories and even bitter sadness. The final one, Our Future Will Become the Past of Other Women, was commissioned to mark the centenary of Irish women exercising their right to vote in 1918. They all say something to our pandemic world now, facing the winter darkness, rain, memories and women looking forward to when our future will be the next generation’s past.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful, powerful collection. Tender yet strong, the poems in The Historians explore themes of womanhood and history, interweaving and divided them in the way they are interwoven but often divided in history. Boland's writing is careful, with each word perfectly placed, gently and thoughtfully. I am sad that I am only discovering Eavan Boland's work now that she is gone, but I am excited that I have so much of her work to explore.

[Katheryn Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only discovered Eavan Boland last year, while studying a Poetry and Poetics module as part of my MA, but she made such an impression on me that I ended up writing my summative essay on her work. The Historians is a fitting final collection, musing on memory and history, lost and silenced voices, and the craft of poetry. This is a book to sit and savour, to read and reread. I feel a genuine sense of loss at her passing.

[Madeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enrapturing for me in this book is the exploration of women's relationship with society as it has evolved and been recorded through history - often speculative, sidelined, yet unaccountably potent.

In this theme, time was folded like an accordion onto various spaces, which layered meaning on certain locations as witnesses to the numerous dramas of historical periods and their subsequent customs and peoples.

[Kyndal · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've loved Boland's work since I discovered her in college, but this may be my favorite collection of her work. Each poem resonated in a different yet interconnected way. It felt as if she and I were together, swirling around something unnamed yet familiar. This is a collection I will return to again and again.

[F · Rating 4 out of 5]

need to add to storygraphs. remarkable