exclusionary bardic tradition that relegates
women to myth and muse (Consalvo 92–93,
Reizbaum 479, Wright 10).
Book X ofThe Republicalso dismisses
poets because, as ‘‘imitators,’’ they are ‘‘thrice
removed’’ from ‘‘the truth’’ (The Republic). Soc-
rates posits that since ‘‘God, whether from
choice or from necessity, made one bed in nature
and one only,’’ the particular beds created by a
bedmaker are imitations of a more perfected
form. Thus, when a poet attempts to create an
imitation of a particular bed, he is creating an
imitation of an imitation (522–25). What is being
dismissed here are the particularities, the ‘‘object
lessons,’’ which for Boland are essential. Thus,
the epigraph that initiates this collection also
functions as protest against a conception of
truth that is distant, mythic, and abstract.
Outside HistoryandIn a Time of Violence
both are testimony to Boland’s desire to resur-
rect the concrete in history and aesthetics—in
essence, to rescue the physical world from the
dung heap. Throughout, Boland combines the
sublime with the ordinary and critiques the sup-
pression of the ordinary that frequently occurs in
art—in sculpture, in writingViolence’s ‘‘We Are
the Only Animals Who Do This’’ conjoins ‘‘the
grey / undertips of the mulberry leaves’’ that
melds into a ‘‘translucence which is all darkness’’
with the particularities of nature and the world
of the ordinary—car keys, traffic, aging, the sob-
bing of her mother. Thinking of her mother
weeping, the persona comments that ‘‘weeping
itself has no cadence.’’ Looking at a statue, a
‘‘veiled woman,’’ she comments: ‘‘all / had been
chiselled out with the veil in / the same, indivi-
sible act of definition / which had silenced her.’’
Perhaps what is so disquieting to some about
Boland is her ability to conjoin these.
Source:Debrah Raschke, ‘‘Eavan Boland’sOutside His-
toryandIn a Time of Violence: Rescuing Women, the
Concrete, and Other Things Physical from the Dung
Heap,’’ inColby Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 2, June 1996,
pp. 135–42.
Jody Allen-Randolph
In the following review, Allen-Randolph points out
Boland’s role in bringing women poets to promi-
nence in Ireland and praises ‘‘Outside History’’ as
‘‘a retrospective of Boland’s most mature and best
work.’’
Poetry in Ireland is still very much domi-
nated by a male bardic tradition. Compared to
their male contemporaries, women poets in
Ireland get very little recognition and arouse
tremendous controversy. Even as I write, the
arts pages and opinion columns of Irish news-
papers are crackling with a furious exchange of
fire over the recently published Field Day
Anthology of Irish Writing, the most comprehen-
sive re-configuration of the Irish canon in this
century. It seems the all-male editorial commit-
tee failed to notice the contribution Irish women
have made to social change and contemporary
writing in the last quarter century, and their
omissions have become the focal point in the
continuing debate over women’s writing.
The controversy has created an atmosphere
of intimidation which continues to help obstruct
the emergence and recognition of women poets.
When an arts administrator at a recent poetry
conference complained of ‘‘the pornography of
childbirth and menstruation in Irish women’s
writing,’’ he went unchallenged. Critics and aca-
demics in Ireland still fail to take seriously even
the most established women poets.
No one has done more to bring about a
long-overdue reappraisal of this state of affairs
than the poet Eavan Boland. In a series of essays
and interviews over the past ten years she has
borne passionate witness to the pressures placed
on women writers in Ireland. More recently, she
has written about how important it is for women
poets who inherit a constraining national tradi-
tion to subvert that tradition.
Born in Dublin in 1944, the youngest child
of an Irish diplomat, Boland spent most of her
childhood in London and New York. Returning
to Dublin as a teenager, she attended Trinity
College and upon graduating was appointed
lecturer in the English department. Deciding
against an academic career, Boland worked forIT IS COMMON FOR NEW LANDMARKS IN
IRISH LITERATURE TO GO UNRECOGNIZED BY ITS
CUSTODIANS. YET WHEN THE DUST KICKED UP BY
THE CURRENT CANON DEBATE HAS SETTLED, I
EXPECT WE WILL SEEOUTSIDE HISTORYFIRMLY
ENSCONCED.’’Outside History