A Formalist Approach to Eavan Boland’s The River Over the years many different ways of analyzing poetry have been developed. One such approach is the “New Critical,” or the “Formalist,” which is based on the writings of Coleridge. The formalist approach is useful because it takes the poem’s form, which may be overlooked, and analyzes it to see what its effect is on the meaning of the poem. There are other aspects taken into consideration, like who the speaker is and how the author incorporates
Comparing Seamus Heaney’s Digging and Eavan Borland’s In Search of a Nation Seamus Heaney’s “Digging” and Eavan Borland’s “In Search of a Nation” focus on issues involving identity. Boland’s essay reveals an individual uncertain in her personality, sexuality, and nationality while Heaney’s poem depicts a man who recognizes his family’s lineage of field laborers yet chooses the pen over the shovel. The benefit of reading the two works vis-a-vis reveals how Ireland has influenced their lives
Identity in the Works of Eavan Boland and Seamus Heaney Many times poetry is reflective of the author’s past as well as their personal struggles. One struggle that poets write about is of identity and the creation, as well as loss, of individual identities. Using a passage from the essay Lava Cameo by Eavan Boland, I will show how two poets use their craft to describe their struggle with identity. Eavan Boland and Seamus Heaney both write poems which express an internal struggle with roles of
Storytelling in Eavan Boland's In a Time of Violence In her 1994 collection of poems, In a Time of Violence, Eavan Boland presents her readers with a very focused set of controlling ideas. These ideas, centered around the concepts of family, history, legends, and storytelling, fluidly intermingle and build upon one another as the work progresses until one notion, above all others, is clear: that the telling and retelling of stories and legends is not only a great power, but a great responsibility
Eavan Boland’s In a Time of Violence was an attempt to cast a light on violence while giving the victims an identity. As an Irish writer, Boland dealt with the idea of nationalistic politics, and her personal plight of being a mother in the suburbs. Her poem “Inscriptions” and “Child Of Our Time” were both written to give names and faces to the innocent deaths of children by political violence. In her essay “Subject Matters”, and interviews, Boland remarks on how she viewed the political poem and
Empowerment of Women in Sylvia Plath's Lady Lazarus and Eavan Boland's Anorexic Although the title foreshadows an extrinsic approach, this essay mostly features intrinsic analysis. Eavan Boland's "Anorexic" seems descendent from Sylvia Plath's "Lady Lazarus": the two share common elements, yet have significant differences. An examination of the poems' themes reveals that self-destructiveness can serve as empowerment for women. Plath explores Lady Lazarus' nontraditional view of suicide in
home’s safety for the uncertainty, and the life stability for hardship. Although a young person wants to have a good relationship with his parents, he also wants to be himself, and emphasize his individuality and autonomy. “Pomegranate,” a poem by Eavan Boland, draws on the Greek myth “Demeter and Persephone” to illustrates the influence of inevitable changes in human development on relationship between mother and daughter, and periodicity of human existence. To express her feelings, Bolan draws
Eavan Boland’s poem “Amber” was published in the Atlantic Monthly in December of 2005. This poem starts off sad, talking about a death of a friend and how grieving seemed to last forever. Boland shows us this through lines one through five. It then goes on saying that if you think of all the good memories that the grieving process will pass and you can be happy when thinking about the lost friend. Boland’s poem “Amber” is showing us that grieving shouldn’t last forever and that memories can take
Eavan Boland’s poem “Love” comes from her collection entitled In a Time of Violence. In the piece Boland both reflects on the history of her and her husband’s love and ties it in with the story of a hero who travels to hell. The poem’s form is stanzaic, broken into 7 stanzas with 38 lines. “Love” is rich with metaphor, simile, personification and imagery. The poem makes constant allusion to Greek Mythology, and the author’s story runs parallel to that of Odysseus from Homer’s “The Odyssey” . Boland
In comparing two poems on Anorexia such as late poets Eavan Boland and Louise Glück, we look into the lives of two individuals who struggled with eating disorders. While eating disorders are still a problem in the world today we don’t often see the emotional and mental taxes up close and personal. With these two poems on Anorexia, we get to see perspectives of the way women view their bodies that aren’t easily accessible. In reading the two works, there are striking differences and they merit thorough
In "Atlantis - A Lost Sonnet" written by Eavan Boland, discusses how maybe Atlantis isn 't really necessarily a place, but more a description for things people have lost throughout their lives and are gone forever. In the poem, the author is the person talking, but she seems to be more thinking to herself rather than talking aloud. She 's thinking about the lost city of Atlantis at the beginning, or so it seems, but then after the end-stopped line saying "I miss our old city-" the subject of the
In the poem, “It’s a Woman’s World,” Eavan Boland offers a bitterly ironic interpretation of women’s role in society. Despite the passing of thousands of years, she believes that women remain the inferior sex. She supports this idea through simple, short words that convey a sort of self-mocking irony and outrage at the role women are forced into by men. The poem is broken down into fourteen stanzas each containing four lines. There is no structured ryme, rather lines and stanzas flow into each
The Black Lace Fan my Mother Gave me Commentary on “The Black Lace Fan my Mother Gave me” by Eavan Bolland The Black Lace Fan my Mother Gave me by Eavan Bolland reflects on the last of a love life of a couple during pre-war Paris using a symbol, a ‘Black Lace Fan’. Bolland achieves this through the use of weather imagery, the changing of his tense from past to present, and using literary features such as simile, metaphor, personification and repetition. In the first stanza of the poem
evening air, fire-eaters. while this one here -- It's our alibi her mouth (25) for all time a burning plume -- that as far as history goes she's no fire-eater, we were never (55) just my frosty neighbour on the scene of the crime. coming home. - Eavan Boland (1982) Since the beginning of time, women have faced an uphill battle for equality with the patriarchal societies. However, during the nineteenth century, many reforms have occurred to raise women to equality with men. More women attend college
John Hollander’s poem, “By the Sound,” emulates the description Strand and Boland set forth to classify a villanelle poem. Besides following the strict structural guidelines of the villanelle, the content of “By the Sound” also follows the villanelle standard. Strand and Boland explain, “…the form refuses to tell a story. It circles around and around, refusing to go forward in any kind of linear development” (8). When “By the Sound” is examined in regards to a story, the poem’s linear development
place in baths while disguising the truths within the rhyming lines of his poem. Works Cited Cole, Henri. "The Roman Baths at Nimes." The Making of a Poem: a Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. By Mark Strand and Eavan Boland. New York: Norton, 2001. 69. Print. Strand, Mark, and Eavan Boland. The Making of a Poem: a Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. New York: Norton, 2001. Print.
that focus on swans in Ireland. The swan has been imbedded in the folklore of Ireland for centuries, one of the most notable legends of Ireland, “The Children of Lir,” has inspired poets throughout the centuries. One can look at the wonderful poet, Eavan Boland’s poem, “Elegy for a Youth Changed to a Swan,” and see the great effect this legend had upon Ireland and it’s people. In these stories the swan is a supernatural element, a transformation, with a sort of dark magic or dark theme surrounding
Throughout his villanelle, “Saturday at the Border,” Hayden Carruth continuously mentions the “death-knell” (Carruth 3) to reveal his aged narrator’s anticipation of his upcoming death. The poem written in conversation with Carruth’s villanelle, “Monday at the River,” assures the narrator that despite his age, he still possesses the expertise to write a well structured poem. Additionally, the poem offers Carruth’s narrator a different attitude with which to approach his writing, as well as his death
The Irish Potato Famine and The Holocaust in Literature Writers often use literature as a means of communicating traumatic events that occur in history, and such events are recorded by first-hand accounts as well as remembered by people far removed from the situation. Two traumatic events in history that are readily found in literature are The Irish Potato Famine and The Holocaust. A literary medium that has been used quite poignantly to convey trauma is poetry and the poetry from these two
Works Cited Bianchi, Martha Dickinson. “The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson.” New York: Biblo and Tannen Publishers, 1972. Dickinson, Emily. “I died for beauty.” The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. Ed. Mark Strand and Eavan Boland. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000.