the poet’s own history of alienation from history
and her desire to no longer accept the status of
outsider.
Death
Boland views death in ‘‘Outside History’’ as
inevitable and painful. In fact, the poem appears
to treat life itself as merely a long, drawn-out
process of dying. It is a trial to be suffered, as
she implies in the poem’s fifth stanza. In the sixth
stanza, her usage of the imagery of the sky once
again draws the reader back to the ideas of
the opening stanzas, of the stars and their long-
dying light. She seems to find that life is as
cluttered with the dead and dying as the heavens
are with the dying light of stars. The final stanza
of the poem emphasizes the prolonged nature
of the process of death. When Boland repeats
the sentiment of being late, forever too late, she
evokes a sense of regret and loss, as does the
imagery of mourning individuals, those who
kneel and whisper at the side of the dead. At the
same time, a double meaning may be at work
here, as the word ‘‘late’’ in everyday parlance
also possesses the connotation of death (as
when a person referring to her late mother is
speaking of her dead mother). By stating that
we are perpetually too late, Boland may be sug-
gesting that the shadow of death is always hang-
ing over us. Boland focuses on the extinguishing
of human life, without a sign of hope for any
possibility of an afterlife, and without any uplift-
ing words about the likelihood of experiencing
joy in one’s life. Her exploration of the theme of
death in this poem is unrelentingly bleak.STYLEFree Verse
‘‘Outside History’’ may be described as a free-
verse lyric poem. In free verse, the poet’s lan-
guage may resemble the comfortable nuances of
natural speech, rather than being formed into a
more structured metrical pattern. In metered
poetry, each line of poetry adheres to a set pat-
tern of accented and unaccented syllables perStarry night sky(Image copyright Rashevska Natalila, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)
Outside History