Poertry

Poertry

  • Submitted By: Synesis
  • Date Submitted: 02/23/2009 11:36 AM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 1207
  • Page: 5
  • Views: 891

I found the poetry of Eavan Boland to be very perceptive and powerful. I admire how she links her poems with her own life along with her perceptiveness of “Irishness“, history and myth. The reasoning behind her poetries wide appeal is her quality use of detail in her descriptions and extremely powerful and thought-provoking images. Boland includes a personal perspective in her poetry which allows me to use her biographical details to understand and view the poem. The result is that I do not get lost as I try to understand the poem, which often happens when reading other poets work. Her use of language is very vivid, evocative, tender and incisive. I admire her strong sense of justice and great compassion for others in her writing. A further reason I like Boland’s poetry is its treating of the suburbs as a suitable locale for her poetry. As a resident of a suburb, I appreciate the link as her poetry is not limited to the extraordinary.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Her poems often record moments of conflict and violence and more importantly she explores the hurt, injustice and insensitivity that accompany these situations. In 'The War Horse', she captures how we fear involvement and try to opt out . Boland skilfully links this poem to the troubles of Northern Ireland; it is written in 1975 – the 1970’s were a time of violence for Northern Ireland and of trouble even for those south of the border where Boland was living – these people had to endure violence occurring close to their homes and live with the threat and possibility of it spilling down into southern Ireland. In doing so, Boland allows a great perspective to view the poem. The poet employs a particularly powerful metaphor by comparing the horse to violence in Northern Ireland. The horse intruding into the suburb she lives in,

‘like a rumour of war, huge,/ Threatening’

is like the intrusion of...