A Poet's Dublin

A Poet's Dublin

Eavan Boland
$26.95
Publication Date: November 8th, 2016
Publisher:
W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN:
9780393285369
Pages:
176

Description

Juxtaposing verse and image, A Poet’s Dublin is a study of origin and influence from “a major Irish poet” (Edward Hirsch).

Written over years, the transcendent and moving poems in A Poet’s Dublin seek out shadows and impressions of a powerful, historic city, studying how it forms and alters language, memory, and selfhood. The poems range from an evocation of the neighborhoods under the hills where the poet lived and raised her children to the inner-city bombing of 1974, and include such signature poems as “The Pomegranate,” “The War Horse,” and “Anna Liffey.” Above all, these poems weave together the story of a self and a city—private, political, and bound by history. The poems are supported by photographs of the city at all times and in all seasons: from dawn on the river Liffey, which flows through Dublin, to twilight up in the Dublin foothills.

About the Author

Eavan Boland (1944—2020) was the author of more than a dozen volumes of poetry, including Outside History and several volumes of nonfiction, and was coeditor of the anthology The Making of Poem. Born in Dublin, Ireland, she was one of the foremost female voices in Irish literature. She received a Lannan Foundation Award and an American Ireland Fund Literary Award, among other honors. She taught at Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, Bowdoin College, and Stanford University, where she was the director of the creative writing program.

Praise for A Poet's Dublin

For Boland, one feels poetry has to be honorable and natural, though at times
as terrifying as giving birth alone in the open meadow, and that it is also made
of blood and the guilt of being human.
— Yusef Komunyakaa