Achill woman, it is not told in the poem. All we are left with is an
image of a woman writer located in a certain place experiencing an
interior moment. Writing the present moment is eclipsed as the poet
gazes into the past story of a myth and looks to the future where she
imagines: ëhow new it is ñ this story. How hard it will be to tell.í Like
Benjaminís description of the Angel of History which was taken from
Paul Kleeís painting ëAngelus Novusí, the speaker is catapulted into
the future whilst looking backwards into the past and with little sense
of the present.^34
Bolandís account of this interior moment produces an unsettling
and supplementary relation to identity and time. As she tries to
articulate herstory, the syntax enacts a pensive stuttering in the final
lines where the womanís assertions in the present tense ñ ëI am
writingí and ëI am thinkingí ñ are punctuated or enclosed by full
stops. These lines read in a stilted way as a series of repetitive false
starts that cannot develop beyond short assertions. As she attempts to
write ëa woman out of legendí, this womanís story is as hard to tell as
her sense of herself or identity is to articulate; her space in the present
is transitory and difficult to write; she will never be wholly present to
herself. In this respect, Bolandís response to the temporal does not
take it for granted that self and time can be controlled into an easy or
exemplary narrative. Bolandís poem hits at the borders of mis-
representation that is inherent in representation; this is why her story
is hard to tell and her subjectivity is impossible to fully write. This
difficulty is reflected in the form of ëStoryí which is held tight within
two line stanzas and many of the lines are made up of half sentences.
When read paying attention to the punctuation and breaks in the
stanza, Bolandís poem sounds stilted and caged. Towards the end, the
sentences become shorter as though silence is getting the better of the
speaker and so the poem finishes with the phrase: ëHow hard it will be
to tell.í The womanís story is located in the future tense as something
that has not yet happened and can be thought only in terms of silence.
ëRealí time or ëwomanís timeí cannot adequately be told within the
Symbolic, and once again, the ëRealí is problematically equated with
ëWomaní,
34 Benjamin, ëTheses on the Philosophy of Historyí, Part IX, p.249.