line, establishing the poem’s rhythm. In free-verse
poetry, both the number of syllables and the
pattern denoting which syllables are accented
and which are not may vary with each line. The
free-verse poem may consist of any number of
stanzas, or of none at all. ‘‘Outside History’’ con-
sists of seven stanzas of three lines each. The free-
verse lines are intimate in tone, complementing
the poet’s serious and thought-provoking subject
matter. Boland’s use of free verse in this poem
contributes to the effect of the poet sharing deep
and private thoughts with the reader.
Lyric
As a lyric poem, ‘‘Outside History’’ is one that
conveys the poet’s thoughts and emotions. It is
not narrative in nature; that is, it does not tell a
story or relate in any chronological way a series
of events. Rather, it is a subjective expression
of feelings on a particular subject or related
themes. Lyric poems like ‘‘Outside History’’ are
often meditative in tone: Boland appears to be
deeply immersed in her own thoughts about
death and one’s participation in human history.
Lyric poems are not always structured as free
verse, as ‘‘Outside History’’ is, but may instead
be more traditional poetic forms, such as sonnets
or ballads.
HISTORICAL CONTEXTIrish Literary Traditions
Although she admits that she is not a scholar in
the field of history, Boland places herself and
other Irish women poets within the context of
Irish literary history in the preface to her 1995
nonfiction workObject Lessons: The Life of the
Woman and the Poet in Our Time. Boland dis-
cusses the roles of women and poets in Irish
history, roles that she maintains have been
mutually exclusive for some time. She states
that she began writing poetry ‘‘in a country
where the wordwomanand the wordpoetwere
almost magnetically opposed.’’ Boland explains
that when she began writing poetry (publishing
her first collection, a chapbook titled23 Poems,
in 1962), poets held an honored place in Irish
culture and history, but the life of a woman
during that time was not viewed as ‘‘exemplary
in the way a poet’s was.’’ By the 1990s, Boland
states, the situation was reversed. Women were
revered, and the lives of women were idealized,
but poets were increasingly seen as obscure fig-
ures estranged from everyday society and its
concerns. This is Boland’s literary and cultural
historical context as she views it.
Looking deeper into Ireland’s literary past,
the scholar John Montague addresses the strug-
gle of the Irish poet to identify him- or herself
as uniquely Irish. As Montague explains in the
1974 introduction toThe Book of Irish Verse:
An Anthology of Irish Poetry from the Sixth
Century to the Present(which includes selections
by Boland), by the eighteenth century the
English language and the native Gaelic language
of Ireland were both in use, but literature was
increasingly written in English. In the nineteenth
century, Irish literature written in English began
to differentiate itself as specifically Irish, and
poets would continue to struggle to express their
own unique Irish identity for years to come. As
Montague states, the contemporary Irish poet
may be viewed as inhabiting ‘‘a richly ambiguous
position, with the pressure of an incompletely
discovered past behind him, and the whole mod-
ern world around.’’ Boland’s poetry arises, then,
out of a literary tradition marked by the struggle
faced by Irish poets in an increasingly British
world.Postcolonialism
The Irish history to which Boland repeatedly
refers in her poetry is a troubled and violent
one. While Boland was born in 1944, some two
decades after the 1921 ending of the war between
Great Britain and Ireland, her poetry in general
is heavily concerned with Irish history since
that earlier time period, and the poem ‘‘Outside
History’’ refers specifically to the pain persis-
tently present in the modern history of the Irish.
Directly following the ending of the Anglo-Irish
War, a civil war broke out between supporters of
a treaty with Great Britain (which would have
required an oath of allegiance to the British
Crown) and those Irish who favored the idea of
an Irish republic. Those who supported the treaty
were defeated, and the civil war ended in 1923. As
the Irish Free State, the country’s status was
somewhat ambiguous; it was considered a part
of the British Commonwealth but retained some
degree of independence at the same time. In 1949,
the Republic of Ireland Bill was passed, and Ire-
land (excluding the portion that had previously
been cordoned off and is now known as Northern
Ireland) became an independent republic.Outside History