darymunne's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
claudiasousa06's review against another edition
5.0
Read this for my Masters. It’s hard to rate it, but I do think Eavan Boland was a very interesting, masterful and engaging poet. She broached all manner of subjects and wasn’t afraid of getting intimate and vulnerable. It’s all laid out in her poems. Some autobiographical, some not, the usual, however they’re all incredible. I particularly enjoyed the poems included from her collections: “In her own image”, “night feed”, “the journey” and “outside history”.
siria's review against another edition
4.0
This anthology brings together dozens of poems from across four decades of Eavan Boland's career. As is to be expected with such a diverse collection, many of Boland's poems here don't quite work for me—particularly the earlier ones where she's struggling to find an independent voice, and some of the later ones, where she seems to become constrained by the expectations she seems to feel that her public persona places on her—and I sometimes get frustrated with Boland's tendency to opt for the blunt anvil of the sentence fragment when a subtler tool would have worked better. But when the poems are good, they're great, and returning to some I first encountered as a teenager I can see again the beginnings of my own grapplings with feminism, history, myth and colonialism.
shannen_m's review against another edition
5.0
One of my favourite poets, damn. This review is just going to be a long list of favourites across all the collections, but know that I love so many of her quiet threads - mothers/daughters and legacy, myth, nature, Irish history and colony, the plurality of narrative forms and the ways they appear in mundanity, dislocation. She's just wonderful, I'll be revisiting often.
The List:
New Territory: The Poets
The War Horse: The War Horse//Child of Our Time//Ready for Flight//Sisters//From the Irish of Pangur Ban//Elegy for a Youth Changed to a Swan//Chorus of the Shadows
In Her Own Image: In His Own Image//Anorexic//Solitary
Night Feed: Night Feed//It's a Woman's World
The Journey: Self-Portraits on a Summer Evening//The Journey
Outside History: On the Gift of The Birds of America by John James Audubon//Mountain Time//Bright-Cut Irish Silver//White Hawthorn in the West of Ireland//What We Lost//Outside History//Our Origins Are in the Sea
In a Time of Violence: The Singers//7. Beautiful Speech//This Moment//At the Glass Factory in Cavan Town//The Water-Clock//Moths//Time and Violence
The Lost Land: Daughter
Code: Quarantine//Once//Code//How We Made a New Art on Old Ground//Hide this Place from Angels
The List:
New Territory: The Poets
The War Horse: The War Horse//Child of Our Time//Ready for Flight//Sisters//From the Irish of Pangur Ban//Elegy for a Youth Changed to a Swan//Chorus of the Shadows
In Her Own Image: In His Own Image//Anorexic//Solitary
Night Feed: Night Feed//It's a Woman's World
The Journey: Self-Portraits on a Summer Evening//The Journey
Outside History: On the Gift of The Birds of America by John James Audubon//Mountain Time//Bright-Cut Irish Silver//White Hawthorn in the West of Ireland//What We Lost//Outside History//Our Origins Are in the Sea
In a Time of Violence: The Singers//7. Beautiful Speech//This Moment//At the Glass Factory in Cavan Town//The Water-Clock//Moths//Time and Violence
The Lost Land: Daughter
Code: Quarantine//Once//Code//How We Made a New Art on Old Ground//Hide this Place from Angels
emilylovesflowers's review against another edition
4.0
I didn't like all of it, but I loved a lot of it. A great book to keep on the nightstand- it was lovely company, having a few poems before bed.
pacing_space's review against another edition
No clue how this escaped from my bookshelf. Snagged this so I’d have a copy of Boland’s poem “Anorexic,” which I first read in college. Greatly enjoy the witchiness of her 1980-1982 poems.
nonbinarylibrarianwitch's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
nemoslibrary's review
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.5
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