New Collected Poems

Description

An expansive, celebratory collection from “one of the finest and boldest poets of the last half century” ( ). Boland’s resilient braid of outspoken feminism with Irish identity has given her a following on both sides of the Atlantic…Here is the poet who learned from Adrienne Rich, among others, how to tackle big topics of loyalty, rebellion, descent and dissent. While still attuned to the silences of the past, Eavan Boland challenges us to accept the consequences of female mastery, as she explores ways of writing about purpose and continuity, success and certainty. The finest evidence ever assembled of the escape from the grip of a tradition. If the procedure of Art is to resist the real while conferring unity upon it, then Eavan Boland, in resisting male histories, has conferred a new meaning upon the phrase ‘Irish poetry.’ How blessed we all are that she abandoned swans. Eavan Boland lives in a different world, one from which she can see not only ‘the Dublin mountains,’ but a looming poetic tradition and the wastes of European history.