Customer Reviews

The Lost Land: Poems

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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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.

"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.

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

These poems are set in Ireland but the author covers a multitude of themes: relationships, growing up, the role of women in society.

I had the pleasure of listening to Eavan Boland at the Des Moines poetry fest last week. When she read the last stanza of "the necessity of irony," about separation from her daughter, there was a collective gasp from the audience at the import of her words and the way she brought us to them via the poem.

A powerful but accessible collection.

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.

Having opened the book with some prejudice--the scorn charged by college students to an assigned book--I was caught off-guard, and taken. The poetry is exquisite, and the sounds are hypnotizing. It is easily digested. Easily, one of the best I've read.

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.

"The Lost Land" has a permanent place at my bedside table. Whenever I open it, my eyes prickle with tears.