Throughout my life, I\u2019ve always had a deep appreciation for poetry.\u00a0 It amazes me how poets can express complex emotions, themes, and metaphors in just a few stanzas.\u00a0 As Voltaire once said \u201cPoetry is the music of the soul, and, above all, of great and feeling souls.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Throughout these last few months, I have been discovering different elements of Irish culture.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been enchanted by Ireland\u2019s vast grassy plains, beautiful architecture, and bustling cities.\u00a0 Irish art, music, and dancing have all become interests of mine.\u00a0 But, above all, I appreciate Irish poetry. Moreover, I appreciate Ireland\u2019s influence on American poetry.<\/p>\n
Eavan Boland was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1944. She moved to London with her family at the age of six but soon returned to Ireland to receive her B.A. at Trinity College in 1966. She immigrated to America and has been living in California since 1996. She is currently a poetry professor at and director of the creativity writing program at Stanford University.<\/p>\n
While she was still a student, she published her first collection of poems called 23 Poems<\/em> in which she discussed her role as an Irish woman and the problems that ensue when you are a woman in Irish culture.\u00a0 Throughout her career as an author and poetry professor, Boland placed herself in the forefront of female writers in Irish poetry.\u00a0 Boland is known for breaking away from the concept of the traditional Irish woman while also creating a fresh perspective on Irish history. Boland\u2019s fifth volume of poems, In Her Own Image,<\/em> placed her on the map. She soon became known for her raw, controversial but acclaimed portrayal of her role as a woman in Ireland. Having first-hand experience, Boland decided to use her talents to create an accurate and honest portrayal of her experience.\u00a0 Critic Ruth Padel described Boland\u2019s writing as a \u201ccommitment to lyric grace and feminism.\u201d<\/p>\n In \u201cOutside History\u201d, she writes about Ireland\u2019s painful history. A few examples of this would be the Great Potato Famine in which starvation, disease, and violence swept through Ireland due to the potato crop failing. Another focus is the Easter Rising of 1916 in which a group of Irish nationalists led a rebellion against the British soldiers. The rebellion was soon shut down but not without several thousands of deaths and the execution of the leaders of the rebellion.\u00a0 The title \u201cOutside History\u201d could also refer to the fact that for the majority of Ireland\u2019s heritage, women were completely cut from the narrative. After all, Irish immigration was actually mostly female. By 1950, 57% of immigrants were female. But this wasn\u2019t simply to escape poverty.\u00a0 It was also to reclaim their lives and escape Irish patriarchy. \u00a0So if Irish women are leaders and breaker of cultural norms, why are they cut from Irish history? This is Boland\u2019s way of expressing how she felt like an outsider in her own culture. Moreover, these lines show the suffering of Irish women as they watched their husbands die. Forced to pick up the pieces of their loves and continue,<\/p>\n How slowly they die<\/em><\/p>\n we kneel beside them, whisper in their ear<\/em><\/p>\n and we are too late. We are always too late<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Many men died in the name of Ireland, but what about the women at their side, the women who were behind the scenes, the women who had the world on their shoulders but forgotten?\u00a0\u00a0 This happened because women were often given the duties that weren\u2019t considered \u201cheroic.\u201d They were not the ones who would fight and die for their country but they still had the great obligation of raising a family, taking care of a household, and tending to farms.<\/p>\n Boland writes poems about the horrific history of Ireland while also communicating the fierce bond and love amongst Irish people In her poem, \u201cQuarantine.\u201d\u00a0 She describes a couple attempting to emigrate from Ireland during the Great Potato Famine.\u00a0 But the woman was gravely ill with typhus. This disease is nicknamed \u201cfamine fever\u201d because of its prevalence during the famine years.\u00a0 Her husband carries her for miles on end but the next day they are found dead with the wife\u2019s feet against the husband\u2019s chest in an effort to give her heat.<\/p>\n Let no love poem ever come to this threshold.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0There is no place here for the inexact<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0There is only time for the merciless inventory.<\/em><\/p>\n Their death together in the winter of 1847.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0Also, what they suffered. How they lived. <\/em><\/p>\n And what there is between a man and a woman. <\/em><\/p>\n And in which darkness it can best be proven. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n This poem illustrates that even in the darkest times there is still a profound love and selflessness between this Irish man and woman. Perhaps this is a metaphor of how even with Ireland\u2019s somber past, there remains a deep and intimate bond amongst Irish people which has helped Ireland prevail even when the odds were not in its favor.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Work Cited<\/p>\n Eavan Boland. (n.d.). Retrieved February 22, 2017,\u00a0 from https:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poems-and-poets\/poets\/detail\/eavan-boland<\/p>\n Outside History \u2013 Eavan Boland. (2010, June 08). Retrieved February 22, 2017, from https:\/\/elessarsc.wordpress.com\/2010\/06\/08\/outside-history-eavan-boland\/<\/p>\n Women in 19th Century Irish immigration. (n.d.). Retrieved February 22, 2017, from https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/12340226<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By: Rachel Forsythe Throughout my life, I\u2019ve always had a deep appreciation for poetry.\u00a0 It amazes me how poets can express complex emotions, themes, and metaphors in just a few stanzas.\u00a0 As Voltaire once said \u201cPoetry is the music of… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,54],"tags":[56,55,57,58],"class_list":["post-280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-behavior","category-writing","tag-eavan-boland","tag-outside-history","tag-poetry","tag-ruth-padel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/exhibits\/irish-cincinnati\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/exhibits\/irish-cincinnati\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/exhibits\/irish-cincinnati\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/exhibits\/irish-cincinnati\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/exhibits\/irish-cincinnati\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/exhibits\/irish-cincinnati\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/exhibits\/irish-cincinnati\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions\/282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/exhibits\/irish-cincinnati\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/exhibits\/irish-cincinnati\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/exhibits\/irish-cincinnati\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}