Eavan Boland

By (author) Jody Allen Randolph

Publication date:

26 November 2013

Length of book:

282 pages

Publisher

Bucknell University Press

Dimensions:

234x161mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781611485363

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.”

Contents

Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter One: The Poetics of Origin
Beginnings
The Muse Mother
Chapter Two: The Nexus of Influence
Claims of Belonging
The Dour Line
Chapter Three: From Patria to Matria
The First Draft
In Her Own Image
Night Feed
Chapter Four: Out of Myth into History
The Journey
Outside History
The Telling of Stories
Chapter Five: Changing the Past
In a Time of Violence
Object Lessons
The Lost Land
Chapter Six: Exiles in our Own Country
Against Love Poetry
Domestic Violence
Journeys and Maps
Notes
Bibliography
Index

This is an especially welcome consideration of a singular contributor to the contemporary Irish canon. Randolph offers an authoritative, accessible study of Eavan Boland's development as a poet and her work to forge a place for women writers both in Ireland and across the English-speaking world. Randolph's extensive research and close reading of Boland's texts serve to track the poet's growth from her early attachment to Yeats to her personal and political changes and encounters with such significant American poets as Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, and Adrienne Rich. The author notes that fundamental to Boland's success and influence is her use of place and domestic objects to challenge Ireland's poetic genres and traditions. Randolph concludes that Boland's efforts in both prose and poetry create a poetic identity, an alignment of womanhood with nationhood that allows her to move beyond these confinements. Including ample notes and an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources, this book is both an important resource for scholars of contemporary poetry and a pleasant introduction for the casual reader of recent Irish literature. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.