Product Description
An expansive, celebratory collection from “one of the finest and boldest poets of the last half century” (Poetry Review).An Origin Like Water: Poems 1967–1987 confirmed Eavan Boland’s place at the forefront of modern Irish poetry. New Collected Poems now brings the record of her achievement up to date, adding material from her subsequent volumes and filling out key poems from the early years. Following the chronology of publication, the reader experiences the exhilarating sense of development, now incremental, now momentous. Boland’s work traces a measured process of emancipation from conventions and stereotypes, writing now in a space she has cleared not by violent rejection, but by dialogue, critical engagement, and patient experimentation with form, theme, and language. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

New Collected Poems
//New Collected Poems// is a complete collection of Irish poet Eavan Boland's first nine volumes of works. This collection begins with poems first published in 1962, when Boland was just eighteen years old, and concludes with works published in 2001. This forty-year span permits the reader to perceive themes that permeate Boland's work over time. Clearly, Boland is well versed in Irish literature and history. Indeed, I enjoyed this collection on one level simply for the opportunity it gave me to research rich allusions and references to Irish history and myth. For a similar reason, I also enjoyed her numerous ekphrases as well. However, it is the very personal themes to which Boland repeatedly and eloquently returns that struck the deepest chord with me. For example, Boland mourns the loss of something significant on leaving Ireland as a child in poems such as "Fond Memory" and "Happiness." In other poems such as "Ode to Suburbia" and "Against Love Poetry," she struggles with her place as a modern woman who is also a wife and mother in suburbia.

//New Collected Poems// captures the evolution of a master poet. As such, it is a pleasure to read, and the poems contained therein continue to resonate with the reader long after the book is closed.

Reviewed by Annie Peters

Bravo Boland
Poetry Reader likes Boland's previous work but doesn't like her collected works.It's that sort of thing that gives literary criticism a reputation for being nonsensical.Boland is a major figure and this is a most welcome addition. ... Read more

Product Description
In this important prose work, one of our major poets explores, through autobiography and argument, a woman's life in Ireland together with a poet's work.Eavan Boland beautifully uncovers the powerful drama of how these lives affect one another; how the tradition of womanhood and the historic vocation of the poet act as revealing illuminations of the other.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Mature blend of imaginatve and analytical
I just finished teaching this work in conjunction with Boland's poetry.This collection is a rare combination of critical thought and poetic metaphor.The more you know about Boland's poetry, the more you will gain from reading _Object Lessons_, so try to read some of her poetry first before you read this volume.(There are also some very good You tube videos available of her reading if you would like to see her and hear her poetic voice.)

Some of her best known poems, especially "Mise Eire," "Persephone," and her poems on Irish history ("That the History of Cartography is Limited," "Famine Road", are extended and explained in successive chapters of this collection but subtly.The chapter "Outside History" is especially important in understanding Boland's growing equation of her own marginality as a woman poet with the historic marginality of Ireland itself.She begins to realize that she can be a better Irish poet because of her experience as an emigrant, as a woman.

Feminist rhetoric without effective arguement
I'm all for feminist discourse and when I began reading this collection of essays I was impressed with Boland's unique style, direction and many times thought that she in some ways compared to Virginia Woolf. Unfortunately as the collection progressed I found myself growing more and more bored, this I attribute to the "I" which Woolf spoke about in "A Room of One's Own". Boland puts I at the front and center of the poem, constantly accusing Irish male poets of turning the female into a symbol without allowing them to be an actual part of the poem. In turn this arguement gets repeated and repeated and repeated to the point that when you're reading you find yourself questioning if maybe you've backtracked and are rereading something again. With a little editing, proper education and enlightenment Boland could have written a fantastic collection but ultimately it falls short. Is it possible that the female is both symbol and subject simultaneously? Boland fails to consider this option and as a result I cannot take this collection seriously, stick to poetry.

Multi-dimensional Issues for Poetic Consideration
The author talks about how-- the history of her country (Ireland), her experiences growing up in London and New York, the culture of poets, and her process of self realization all influenced the development of her poetic voice. This isn't a book just for Irish poets or women, the issues she discusses go to the heart of why people write the poetry they do and what expectations they have in doing so as well as how it influences other poets.

More than anything, her book shows the many ways in which we can find ourselves in different environments and roles throughout the course of our lives. She goes from daughter to exile to urbanite to rural to suburb to mother as well as exploring her own ancestry. She discusses the culture and politics of nations, poetry, and gender.

A good read for people who aren't even interested in poetry.

Amazing, Beautiful
I first read Eavan Boland in an Irish literature class in college.Her writing is magical, lyrical, ethereal and forces you realize the power of identity, language, culture.

Not just for Irish literature fans, but anyone who enjoys beautiful prose.

Powerful; lyrical; explores issues of women, poets, Irish
Boland addresses the struggles of a poetess finding her voice in a societywhich seems to lack a place for her.Through seemingly circular reasoning,she approaches, considers, defines, and returns to consider thesignificance of the events of Ireland and the writing of others in her ownunique and powerful voice.An enchanting read that reminds women of theirown experiences while addressing the dichotomy that keeps them separate. ... Read more

Product Description
A San Francisco Chronicle BestBook: a celebrated collection from "one of thefinest and boldest poets of the last halfcentury" (Poetry Review).These are poems about the charged spaces in which people live, about the interiors whereseductions, quarrels, memories, and griefsoccur. A marriage is a window for outwardviolence; a painted cup becomes a theater for along love; in an ordinary room a mythicviolation takes place. 7 illustrations ... Read more

Product Description
A celebrated collection from "one of thefinest and boldest poets ofthe last halfcentury"(Poetry Review).These are poems about the charged spaces in which people live, about the interiors whereseductions, quarrels, memories, and griefsoccur. A marriage is a window for outwardviolence; a painted cup becomes a theater for along love; in an ordinary room a mythicviolation takes place. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Domestic Violence
Eavan Boland's Domestic Violence is a work of stunning political insight and imaginative range. Her new collection of poetry extends her reputation as an Irish writer of extraordinary lyric power whose subjects encompass family and nation, nurturance and starvation. Highly recommended. ... Read more

Product Description
This is the second in a series which aims to show the richness and diversity of contemporary poetry. It offers representative poems of three poets, Carol Ann Duffy, Vicki Feaver and Eavan Boland, who chose the poems themselves. ... Read more

Product Description
The publication of Eavan Boland's previous book, Outside History: Selected Poems 1980-1990,established Boland as a significant presence inthe contemporary American poetry world.This,her seventh book, continues to mine what she has termed "the meeting place between womanhoodand history."  ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

powerful and feminine
This collection, like Outside History, paints the feminine landscape with an unexpected strength.Her poems inspire me with their music and their accurate depiction of the conflicting feelings that the roles of mother,woman and artist/individual can produce.Boland, like Plath, creates mythfrom the familiar and reveals both the power and vulnerability ofwomanhood.

My favorite poem is The Pomegranate, which I think should berequired reading for any would-be mother, the mother of a daughter and/or ateen.When I heard Boland read this poem aloud, I was moved to tears.

She is often compared to Heaney--not just because they're both Irish (Ihope), but because her talent for controlling and using language is matchedonly by his.

I cannot praise this work or this poet highly enough. ... Read more

Product Description
Two beloved and esteemed poets have collaborated on this intimate and useful anthology illuminating the history, practice, and wonder of our most elusive art. Intended for all those who love poetry, including teachers, readers, writers, and students, The Making of a Poem will be especially valued by those who feel that an understanding of form—sonnet, ballad, villanelle, sestina, etc.—would enhance their appreciation of poetry, but are daunted by the terms, the names, and the histories of various poetic forms. This anthology draws the reader in, by example and explanation, to the excitement and entertainment of these forms. It explains their origins, traces their development, and shows examples from the past and present. In a feature called "The form at a glance" the reader can try his or her own hand writing a particular form. Included are essays by each of the editors describing their own personal journeys toward a form for their poetic voice. Above all, this anthology shows that poetic form is a continuing adventure. Contemporary poets can be seen here trying out the same forms that poets used hundreds of years ago, but in the new circumstances of a complicated modern world. In this way poetic form is illustrated not as a series of rules, but as a passionate conversation in which every reader of poetry can become involved. Amazon.com Review
The Making of a Poem is among the best how-to-read-poetry titles. Edited by two of our greatest living poets, one Irish and female, the other American and male, it is both an exploration of poetic forms and an anthology. Eavan Boland and Mark Strand each offer an introduction and then give us a series of chapters devoted to particular verse forms--the sonnet, the ballad, the sestina, the villanelle, blank verse, the stanza--as well as a long section devoted to what they somewhat vaguely call shaping forms. This refers to poetic structures established not by a specific rhyme and/or metrical pattern but by content: the elegy, for example, or the pastoral or ode. The book then concludes with a section on open forms. Each chapter is conveniently subdivided, each topic simply defined: a single page gives "The Ballad at a Glance" (or, for that matter, the pantoum) as a quick overview of the form's structure. A page or two on the history of the form follows, along with a brief comment on "the contemporary context." Then a chronological anthology of poems demonstrates the particular form. In the sonnet's case, for instance, we are treated to 23 brilliantly chosen examples--everything from Shakespeare's "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" to Seamus Heaney's "The Haw Lantern" to Mary Jo Salter's playful "Half a Double Sonnet." The section then concludes with another brief analysis of one example. In this spot, the villanelle features Elizabeth Bishop's classic heartbreaker, "One Art," and blank verse gives us far too brief a take on Robert Frost's tantalizing "Directive." Itself worth the price of admission, the poem begins:

Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simply by the loss
of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more than a house
Upon a farm that is no more than a farm
And in a town that is no more than a town.

Customer Reviews (28)

good introduction to poetry forms
Understanding poetry forms is an important place for the beginning poet to start.This book is easy and informative for that process

Cookbook of Poetic Forms
Of all the anthology's of Poetic Forms, this is the best at showing the precise differences between each poetic form. Each poetic form has an "At a Glance" section which provides the exact differences, sort of cookbook style. Other books in this category are: Handbook of Poetic Form (excellent for it's breadth), How to be Well Versed, Rhyme's Reason.

Made My Life Easier
Wish I had this book years ago. Perfectly arranged by type of poem with helpful "At a Glace" pages that quickly explains the form of the poem. For instance, "The Vinanelle at a Glance" lists six basics that form the Villanelle. This book is invaluable for a student or a lover of poetic form. It is complete with classic and contemporary poems. Of course, the book is a Norton Anthology - who always publish quality books.

The Making of a Poem purchase
The product arrived in perfect condition within a matter of days. I would purchase from here again.

Fascinating
Being fairly new to poetry, I purchased this book as an introduction to poetic forms, and it does not disappoint. The authors have cultivated a fantastic guide to many of the more popular forms of the modern era, and a few less popular forms. I found the chapters on the Villanelle and on Blank Verse to alone be worth the minimal price tag. The descriptions are terse but wholly concise. The choices the authors made for examples are so perfect that this book could work simply as an anthology of great poems. It is not, though, an all-around introduction to poetry, meter is barely touched upon, and some lesser forms are not given mention, but as books on important poetic forms go, I could hardly recommend another. ... Read more

Product Description
An essential volume by one of our most esteemed poets. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Her Best
If you're interested in reading Boland, this is the book to get. Here you see a genuine artist grimly struggling with the details of her craft and often managing to say the true and difficult thing. Something terrible happens in the later books, I'm afraid, in which Boland develops possibly the worst case of complacency and hubris in contemporary poetry. It's almost as if she loses all faith in language and stakes her claim entirely on the basis of sociology, on being "an important voice" that must be heard. There are just too many other voices out there who are still struggling with their art, who have not yet succumbed to vanity and cashing in on the benefits of being an overstuffed "public" poet (facilitated by the academy, unfortunately, with their fat endowed chairs and inflated reading fees) to seriously accept the later books along with the grand claims Boland demands for them. This book, though, gives hints of what might have been.

The Voice of the Forgotten...
Eavan Boland, with her words of flowing lyric, succeeds at giving the lives of women a place in poetry, and myth a voice. This anthology is practically a catalog of her growth as a poet. Her poetic talent makes fora comforting read.You can feel yourself ascending from hell with Sapphoin "The Journey."It is a must read for those who appreciatecontemporary poetry or women's issues. ... Read more

Product Description
This study provides an analysis of Eavan Boland's evolution as a Irish woman poet which is informed by feminist and postcolonial ideologies. This work should appeal to scholars interested in Irish poetry, feminism, and postcolonialism. This study re-evaluates Boland's work in the dual light of two important ideologies within modern Irish writing: feminism and postcolonialism. Its main objective is to analyze Boland's evolution as an Irish woman poet in her attempt to overcome marginalization as a postcolonial gendered subject. By bringing together postcolonial and feminist theorizations of identity, this study demonstrates how Boland gradually undermines the (presumably authentic) representations of 'woman' and 'nation' she has inherited. By describing 'Irishness' and 'womanhood' in terms of fluidity and hybridity, Boland's poetry exposes the constructedness of identity itself and allows the speaker to find a place freed from authoritative ideologies. In so doing, Boland manages to present a background where new decolonizing identities can emerge. In other words, it is here where she finds her way out as an outsider within an outsider's culture. ... Read more

Product Description
An eloquent series of linked essays about the poetic enterprise from "one of the finest and boldest poets of the last half century" (Poetry Review)."This is a book of being and becoming. It is about being a poet. It is also about the long process of becoming one," writes Eavan Boland. These inspiring essays are both critical and deeply personal, allowing the adventure, passion, and struggle of becoming a woman poet to be viewed from different perspectives. Boland traces her own experiences as a woman, wife, and mother and their effects on her poetry. In the opening essay, she explores the story of her mother, a painter, and her influence on Boland's own concepts of art and womanhood. She examines the work of women poets such as Adrienne Rich, Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Sylvia Plath, whose poetry provided light and guidance for her own work. And finally, in "Letter to a Young Woman Poet," she addresses an unseen young poet of the future, and looks to a world where this future artist can change the poetic past as well as the present. ... Read more

Product Description
A collection of poems about marriage by one of our most celebrated poets. These powerful poems are written against the perfections and idealizations of traditional love poetry. The man and woman in these poems are husband and wife, custodians of ordinary, aging human love. They are not figures in a love poem. Time is their essential witness, and not their destroyer. A New York Times Notable Book and a Newsday Favorite Book of 2001. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Language that Startles
I always find it challenging to rate a book of poetry, since a single great poem can make it worth the purchase. That said, I discovered more than a few wonderful poems in this collection. Certain language will stay with me for a long time, like this from the poem "Quarantine," about a couple who died walking north...

"But her feet were held against his breastbone.
The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her."

Then there is this from "The First Year"...

"the steep inclines
and country silences
of your boyhood,
the orange-faced narcissi
and the whole length of the Blackwater"

And, from "Making Money"...

"see the small boundaries all this will buy
or the poisoned kingdom with its waterways
and splintered locks or the peacocks who will walk
this paper up and down in the windless gardens"

In the end, though I could discuss lines and silences, internal rhymes and themes, this is the only way to explain poetry...to share what startles and wait.

Against Love Poetry
//

This is a unique book of poems by
a woman "married thirty years"
who, if you'll pardon the expression,
tells it like it is.

It's no surprise that
this book, in particular, has
has raised the hackles of those
who prefer women to write
angst-inspired confessionals as opposed to
what we have here --the truth.

The language, as always, is beautiful.

Two of the poems, "Quarantine" and "Thanked Be
Fortune" are fantastic. Read this book first, and

judge for yourself.

a thoroughly enjoyable book
Against Love is an extremely interesting work. As the author states, it is a polemic (confrontational argument), not an essay or balanced account of the subject. It is purposefully designed to push the reader into a confrontatory state regarding the subject of love, especially in the context of marriage/coupling in current U.S. society.
I found Kipnis writing wonderful, witty, intense, and refreshing. She is the first author I have read in a long time that sent me packing off to the dictionary more than once in a book. She is erudite without being a stuffy academic, knowledgable without being pedantic, and humorous without being gross. I see her as having the honesty of a Carol Queen, the political savy and wit of a Molly Ivins or Jim Hightower, the insightful intellect of a Noam Chomsky, and more. This is one of the few books I have read in the last few years that had me laughing out loud in places. She really hits the nail right on the thumb. Regardless of how you feel about the topic or the ideas discussed, her writing alone is worth reading the book.

Of course, I may be biased. Her writing style is similar enough to mine that I felt very much at home with this book, and read it quickly. She does write in a style that is complex, with long sentences (and paranthetical asides). She also has a substantial vocabulary. Her use of style is neither narcissistic nor exhibitionistic, however. Her use of language in her presentation of ideas is pointed and precise, and it is difficult to put the book down once one starts reading it. (I found myself reading it in one sitting.) Despite being divided into chapters, it reads more like one long, flowing discussion.

As far as the actual material, it is not an exhaustive history of marriage and courtship behavior in U.S. society. It is a series of observations and arguments exploring the weakness of the concepts of love and marriage as they are viewed today by mainstream U.S. culture. Kipnis connects recent biological research, various social theories, and behavior reported by people in therapy to weave her arguments. She does address some historical material in order to provide context for her arguments, but again, it is by no means exhaustive. She does provide enough information, however, sources cited in the text and a bibliography and reference list, to encourage more in-depth exploration.

It is meant to be a starting point for further exploration and discussion, and offers no surprise happy endings and no panaceas. This is not a book about how to be polyamorous, develop new relationship styles, swing, or live happily alone. It is an intellectual broadside fired at the status quo in order to get people to open up and think about something which is normally not in their conscious awareness, and to question that which is usually mindlessly accepted.

A sad decline
I was a great admirer of Ms. Boland's early poems, though what struck me as bold and innovative and fresh in that work has become (or so it seems to me) a sort of tired rhetorical posturing, and a sort of frumpy stylistic manner. Her early authority seems feigned now, and I personally find it hard to account for the flatness and airiness of the poems themselves.I should add that I say all this with a sinking heart, as I had very high hopes for her career.

Fake Irish Poetry
In this most pretentiously titled book, Boland continues to ask us to believe that she speaks for women everywhere and that she has something significant to say about Irish history and politics. It's no accident that she teaches and lives in America--in Ireland we're having none of her. Here she is deeply unpopular, especially among the younger generation of female poets who look to more innovative writers for their models. The problem is that Boland shamelessly courts the establishment with her predictable and traditionalist domestic (domesticated) verse while at the same time striking psuedo-revolutionary academic postures. The poems themselves are flat, frightened and derivative. This is very poor work indeed. ... Read more

Product Description
"Collected Poems" includes work from Eavan Boland's early collections "New Territory", "The War Horse" and "In Her Own Image", as well as from her four Carcanet volumes. ... Read more

Product Description
Here, from one of our major poets, is the collected early work that has been long unavailable in this country. Included in this volume is the work from Eavan Boland's five early volumes of poetry: New Territory, The War Horse, In Her Own Image, Night Feed, and The Journey. The poems from Boland's first book, New Territory, show her to be, at twenty-two, a master of formal verse reflecting Irish history and myth. This collection charts the ways in which Boland's work breaks from poetic tradition, honors it, and reinvents it. Poems like "Anorexic," "Mastectomy," and "Witching" have an intensity reminiscent of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. In later poems, her subjects become more personal, sequencing Boland's life as a woman, poet, and mother. Boland writes, "I grew to understand the Irish poetic tradition only when I went into exile with it," becoming, in effect, "a displaced person / in a pastoral chaos." This collection demonstrates how Boland's mature voice developed from the poetics of inner exile into a subtle, flexible idiom uniquely her own. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

seamus heaney had better make room at the top
Eavan Boland's early work is collected here. This volume, then, can be read as a progression through a life as a woman and a poet. Her poetry speaks to the everyday human concerns. It also grapples with political issues and personal consequences. If you have not read Boland's work, you should. She is a major voice in Irish literature and in contemporary poetry and deserves recogintion among the best. This volume allows you to see how her work has evolved. Once you read this, I urge you too look at In a Time of Violence, her most recent poetry collection. Also, her memoir, Object Lessons, is a must read for every woman poet today and a good read for anyone interested in poiltics, poetry, Ireland, or womanhood. Boland is also a wonderfully generous person and teacher ... Read more

Product Description
In The Lost Land, Eavan Boland "is intensely engaged with the ancient bardic lineage of her homeland, giving her poems an ineluctable moral gravity. . . . Her poems offer a curative gift of merciful vision to a country blinded by its own blood and pain, as her narrators wait more or less patiently in their 'difficult knowledge' for the healing of their country's wounds" (San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle).Amazon.com Review
Eavan Boland's powerful ninth collection is taut with brutal truths andbeautiful, sad images--explorations of Ireland's tragic history. In"Unheroic," for example, she finds the best of her country not in itsfossilized heroic statuary, but in the unsung and unhealed. Another poem inthe first sequence, "The Colonists," is a tour de force of imaginativesympathy and irony, in which the conquerors are at last turning into aghostly, tearful crew, no longer able to navigate the land they oncepossessed: "They are holding maps / But the pages are made of fadingdaylight." A third standout is the lyrical and staccato "A Dream ofColony," a vision of wish-fulfillment in which words can reverse the past:

Each phrase of ours,
holding still for a moment in the stormy air,
raised an unburned house
at the end of an avenue of elder and willow.

Unturned that corner
the assassin eased around and aimed from.
Undid. Unsaid:
Once. Fire. Quick. Over there.

Customer Reviews (8)

These are wonderful poems!
//

The poems in The Lost Land trace the history of Ireland from the time "after the wolves and before the elms" to the present.

In addition, some of the poems are also about language, i.e.the effect of the imposition of English on the Irish and the idea that the words we speak today contain the memory of other languages.

"That is what language is:
a habitable grief. A turn of speech
for the everyday and ordinary abrasion
of losses such as this"

("A Habitable Grief", at p. 32 of The Lost Land,)

"What is a colony
if not the brutal truth
that when we speak
the graves open"

("Witness" at p. 18 of The Lost Land)

As always, wonderful poems from Eavan Boland.

Shocking
"The Lost Land" stands out from Boland's previous collections for its precise, cutting indictments of the colonists and the repression in Irish history. The poem "The Necessity For Irony" shocked me as well, and other poems such as "Heroic" voiced those nagging feminist desires to be heroic and triumphant. In all, a complex and divining collection that rings with meaning (for women, and for poets, at least) that has trouble with the short, dense sentences that can bore after awhile.

A bit too self-important?
While Ms. Boland's early poems were filled with a kind of daring and surprise, this latest book seems to have settled for the mock-solemnities of someone who believes she has "arrived."What once was spark now is ash, what once was passionate engagement now is yawning piety.One wishes her writing life weren't quite so settled.

So-so.
Eavan Boland, The Lost Land (Norton, 1998)

Irish poet Eavan Boland may be one of the most critically acclaimed and much-lauded unknown poets in the world. She's served two terms as the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Stanford University, won the Lannan Award, curated poetry exhibits, published eight books of poetry and one of prose to the delight of critics everywhere, had poetry appear in all three of the great triumvirate of American poetry magazines (The New Yorker, Poetry, and The American Poetry Review), and yet, somehow, when the name comes up, even many of the most astute and well-read poets cock their heads like dogs trying to learn a new command. Why this is, I've no idea. But it could have something to do with the poetry itself.

Don't get me wrong. Obviously, if the editors of the Three Best Poetry Magazines in America™ are thrilled with Boland's poetry, the rest of us would be heathenish rabble to criticize. And yet, while reading through The Lost Land, it dawned on me that Boland likes to use short sentences. Very short. A lot. In every poem. (You get the idea.) Her subject matter is almost always thought-provoking and fresh, the presentation of them impressionist, minimal, and often sublime. But then some those short sentences that transform the thing from a gentle flow into the rapids.

"I have two daughters.

They are all I ever wanted from the earth.

Or almost all."
("The Lost Land")

It's as if Boland is trying to replicate a pattern of speech that grates on the nerves. Which, in small doses, can be a powerful statement, but in a book-length collection, where it's used frequently, it does get annoying.

Still, that's not a reason to completely disparage the book. Boland's work does have a compelling nature to it, a method of expression that keeps the pages turning and is, in fact, quite impressive. With a bit better flow control, this would be perfect stuff. ** ½

Postcolonialism by numbers
This is a flat and formulaic book from a writer churning out a sort of postcolonialism by numbers, smugly confident of her direct line to the hidden truths about Irish history. This hidden truth about Irish history seems to be, surprise surprise, that it culminates in the poetry of Eavan Boland. Boland was already overrated in comparison to many of her Irish contemporaries, but this is easily her worst book to date. ... Read more

Product Description
"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. ... Read more

Product Description
An enlightening, celebratory anthology of the most classic and enduring of forms edited by twomajorpoets.This illuminating anthology follows the sonnet through its various moments andmakers over fiveand a halfcenturies. Edward Hirsch and Eavan Boland, two of our foremost poets, focus onvicissitudes, payingparticular attention to how individual poets—from Shakespeare toStrand—have claimedthesefourteen lines: lengthened them, shortenedthem, elaborated on them, and, in turn,beendefined by them. Three sections—"The Sonnetin the Mirror," "The Sonnet Goes to Different Lengths," and "The Sonnet extraordinary durability and itsreinventions. The collectionopens with personal introductions by the editors, and, in the appendix, they provide "Ten Questions for aSonnet Workshop" tojump-start a conversationbetween students and teachers. With more than three hundred poems, TheMaking of aSonnet guides readers through a vigorousadventures in craft and practice,right up to its extraordinary resurgence incontemporary poetry. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

A Handsome Anthology, and a Strong Idea
A long term admirer of the authors, I bought this book when it first appeared, and am glad I did, the commentary alone, for me, anyway, being well worth the price. The idea of placing individual sonnets within the context of the development of the form was ingenious, and will be of enormous help to poetry lovers and aspiring sonneteers. The clever arrangement of this book in part inspired some elements in my own recent anthology, Sonnets for Sinners: Everything One Needs to Know About Illicit Love, in that I arranged the poems to illustrate the emotional journey of illicit love, and also added a facing page of insight into each sonnet (and sonneteer). So then, to these anthologists, Hat's Off!--and Thanks.

A Norton Anthology: In all the best and worst ways
If you go by the number of pages devoted to the various incarnations of the sonnet in this anthology, you'd come to the conclusion that the 20th century English language sonnet is the highpoint in the history of the form with some minor attention given to international sonneteers such as Neruda or Rilke. The layout of the book was also problematic as you are given a detailed breakdown of sonnet mechanics at the very end of the volume, if the breakdown was at the start of the anthology I would have a better appreciation for the intent of the poems outside of my normal aesthetics.

If you are interested in a deeper look at the history of the English language sonnets, I'd recommend The Sonnet: A Comprehensive Anthology of British and American Sonnets from the Renaissance to the Present, Edited by Robert M. Bender and Charles L. Squier.

Breadth more than depth
I own only two books of sonnets, Hirsch & Boland and Levin's The Penguin Book of the Sonnet: 500 Years of a Classic Tradition in English. I do like the commentary in Hirsh & Boland better; Boland's essay "Discovering the Sonnet" is especially wonderful. But for a book to pick up and browse I prefer the Levin. It has much more depth for many of the genre's most accomplished practitioners, e.g. over 30 from Shakespeare vs. ten in Hirsh & Boland. So if you want to learn about sonnets, get H&B. If you want to read them, get Levin. Or better, get both.

Rated this way for the twentieth century.
There has been a revival in the sonnet in English-language poetry in recent years, but you'd never guess that from this book, which tends to give the impression that sonnets written after World War II were essentially a curiosity, something one does once or twice. The Levin anthology is far, far, superior.

Great gift for a talented poet
I gave this book as a present to a friend after hearing the authors on the NPR's (WBUR) "On Point", my favorite talk show. She really enjoyed it. I had to test it to make sure that I didn't lose her opinion - whatever it is - of my critical acumen. After sampling it for an hour before presenting it, I found the writers to be bright, engaging, and erudite, and just the list of all the sonnets cited to be worth the price of admission. I will be getting my own copy soon. ... Read more