or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
or
Amazon Prime Free Trial required. Sign up when you check out. Learn More
More Buying Choices
Have one to sell? Sell yours here
Outside History: Selected Poems, 1980-1990
 
See larger image
 
Tell the Publisher!
I'd like to read this book on Kindle

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Outside History: Selected Poems, 1980-1990 [Paperback]

Eavan Boland (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Price: $14.95 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.
Only 2 left in stock--order soon (more on the way).
Want it delivered Tuesday, January 31? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details

Formats

Amazon Price New from Used from
Hardcover --  
Paperback $14.95  

Book Description

September 2001

An essential volume by one of our most esteemed poets.


Frequently Bought Together

Outside History: Selected Poems, 1980-1990 + The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Volume 6: The Twentieth Century and Beyond + Selected Poems 1957-1994
Price For All Three: $71.96

Show availability and shipping details

Buy the selected items together
  • In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

  • The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Volume 6: The Twentieth Century and Beyond $43.75

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    This item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Details

  • Selected Poems 1957-1994 $13.26

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details



Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With this volume Boland, an Irish poet, establishes herself as an important voice in contemporary poetry. Through close attention to the specific details of women's domestic lives, she transcends minutiae and gives shape to the larger emotions and truths of those lives. In "Woman in Kitchen,"sic where the "tropic of the dryer tumbling clothes / the round lunar window of the washer / . . . in a room white and quiet as a mortuary," she exposes the inner vitality of her subject by evoking the exterior. The theme of both the creative and the imprisoning power of myth recurs throughout. In the excellent title sequence, Boland explores the movement of women from myth to history, evoking the painful awareness implicit in any move toward self-determination: "Out of myth into / history I move to be / part of that ordeal / whose darkness is / only now reaching me from the field." Her sharpened skill with language, rhythm and form permeates each poem in a collection that is a delight to ear and mind.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This is the first book that the Irish poet Boland has published in America. The poems, slackly composed, consist largely of shopworn prose clunkily parsed into lines: "Listen. This is the noise of myth. It makes/ the same sound as shadow. Can you hear it?" Her perspective on the world is self-referential to the point of narcissism; in one poem she informs us that she is wearing "a denim skirt,/ a blouse blended in/ by the last light," in another that she was "a nine-year-old in high fawn socks," in yet another that she attended "a school where all the children wore darned worsted." Boland also attempts to go mythic, with occasionally risible results: "Look at me, says the tree./ I was a woman once like you,/ full-skirted, human."-- Frank Lepkowski, Oakland Univ. Lib., Rochester, Mich.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 151 pages
  • Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (September 2001)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0393308227
  • ISBN-13: 978-0393308228
  • Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #445,949 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Eavan Boland was born in Dublin, Ireland. At the age of six, she and her family relocated to London. She later returned to Dublin for school, and she received her B.A. from Trinity College in 1966. She was also educated in London and New York.

Her books of poetry include New Collected Poems (W.W. Norton & Co., 2008), Domestic Violence, (2007), Against Love Poetry (2001), The Lost Land (1998), An Origin Like Water: Collected Poems 1967-1987 (1996), In a Time of Violence (1994), Outside History: Selected Poems 1980-1990 (1990), The Journey and Other Poems (1986), Night Feed (1982), and In Her Own Image (1980).

In addition to her books of poetry, Boland is also the author of Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time (W. W. Norton, 1995), a volume of prose, After Every War (Princeton, 2004), an anthology of German women poets, and she co-edited The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms (with Mark Strand; W. W. Norton & Co., 2000) and The Making of a Sonnet (with Edward Hirsch; W. W.Norton 2007. She also edited Irish Writers on Irish Writing (Trinity Press: 2007) and Charlotte Mew: Selected Poems (Carcanet Press 2008). A book of essays on women and poetry, called "A Journey with Two Maps" is forthcoming.

Her awards include a Lannan Foundation Award in Poetry, an American Ireland Fund Literary Award.She has taught at Trinity College, University College, Bowdoin College, and she was a member of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. she is currently a professor of English at Stanford University where she directs the creative writing program.She divides her time between Dublin and California. Boland and her husband, author Kevin Casey, have two daughters.

 

Customer Reviews

2 Reviews
5 star:
 (1)
4 star:
 (1)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Voice of the Forgotten..., April 1, 2000
This review is from: Outside History: Selected Poems, 1980-1990 (Paperback)
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 for a comforting read. You can feel yourself ascending from hell with Sappho in "The Journey." It is a must read for those who appreciate contemporary poetry or women's issues.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No


4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Her Best, May 27, 2003
By A Customer
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.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Only search this product's reviews



What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?


Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
 

Your tags: Add your first tag
 

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

Customer Discussions

This product's forum
Discussion Replies Latest Post
No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
 


Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
Search all Amazon discussions
   
Related forums





Look for Similar Items by Category


Look for Similar Items by Subject