Object Lessons

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. Included are autobiographical pieces about a woman living in Ireland, about a grandmother, a childhood. In the second section, Boland details the part of the life in which the vocation of the poet meets the life of the woman.