Code

Boland Eavan

"Code" consists of a group of shorter poems and one of Eavan Boland's major sequences which extends the thematic concerns first traced in "The Journey" 15 years ago. Time passes: the poet's own situation as woman, mother and wife changes. The sense that earlier poems have made is not invalidated; it is qualified in a new time and place. The feminist perspectives of the poet, in the marriage sequence that stands at the beginning of the book and the ode with which the book concludes, take crucial new risks with language. Boland moves beyond the "broken narratives between women" towards new forms of exploration and affirmation.

About the Author

Born in Dublin in 1944, Eavan Boland studied in Ireland, London and New York. Her first book was published in 1967. She has taught at Trinity College, University College and Bowdoin College Dublin, and at the University of Iowa. She is currently Mabury Knapp Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University, California. A pioneering figure in Irish poetry, Boland's previous works include "The Journey and other poems" (1987), "Night Feed" (1994), "The Lost Land" (1998) and "Code" (2001). Her poems and essays have appeared in magazines such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Kenyon Review and American Poetry Review. She is a regular reviewer for the Irish Times. She divides her time between California and Dublin where she lives with her husband, the novelist Kevin Casey.

Reviews

"Code by Eavan Boland sees her returning to the mastery of the domestic that distinguished her early collections like 'Nightfeed', but having benefited from her explorations of history along the way. Poems to stop you, wonder-struck, in your tracks" – Caroline Walsh, The Irish Times

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