Against Love Poetry: Poems
For over 20 years, Eavan Boland (b. 1944 in Dublin) has been  interweaving themes of the importance of poetry, Irish history,  and women's identity. This volume (her ninth book of poetry),  which dramatizes conflicts between marriage and freedom ("what  is hidden in/ this ordinary, aging human love") could be  subtitled "contradictions of a daily love." "Against" overdone  "love poetry" ("Let no love poem ever come to this threshold")  because it falsifies "the edge of language," she instead seeks  "exact patience" and rapport between self and place, man and  wife "mated for life." Overcoming her uncertainties, Boland  finds relief in a "merciless inventory" that utilizes  imagination to transcend computer and moral "codes" ("the code  marriage makes of passion"), necessary, fixed things subject to  "duty, dailyness, routine." The Yeatsian landscape of her poetry  ("salmon-rich/ rivers and birdlife/ and lilac of this island")  is the troubled starting point for her search for identity. But  to read these poems only as a tour of the Irish countryside is  to acquiesce to the "terrible regard" of those who romanticize  its "savage acres." Finally, Boland's self-recognition is an  expression of an honest spirit that finds strength in "what  wears, what endures." For contemporary collections. Frank Allen,  Northampton Community Coll., Tannersville, PACopyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.