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Against Love Poetry: Poems
by
Eavan Boland
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.
Paperback, 64 pages
Published
April 17th 2003
by W. W. Norton & Company
(first published 2001)
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This is such a finely-crafted collection of poems, a meditation on the ordinariness of love, on the tension that exists between "womanhood" and the "servitudes of custom." Boland's observations are keen, picking apart not love but the conventions of love poetry, the expectations that lie behind relationships. 'Irish Poetry', 'Thanked Be Fortune' and especially 'Quarantine' are the stand-out poems for me—'Quarantine' startled me into near tears. I'm a generation or so further removed from the Fam...more
Boland's poetry is always lovely, and this book is particularly rooted in "place." My favorite from this book is "Code," which says it is "An Ode to Grace Murray Hopper 1906-88 maker of a computer compiler and verifier of COBOL." I love the comparison between writing poetry and writing computer code, how both are creating a world.
i love that this collection of poems about love and the transformations of love -- the surface and texture of it -- is entitled "Against Love Poetry" because it is. the collection stands against the thousands of poems about love and its evanescence, its fragility, and its fickleness. boland writes about the dangers of love and the risks of love, but more about the shifting, swaying, unlocatable, let alone undefinable center of love. it transforms and transforms. and boland shows us the passage o...more
Because I read her poems in this book, Eavan Boland has become my favourite poet.
Read SQT's copy
eavan boland - the genuine irish poet with the irish style of writing. we can found her irish mark-ups in several poems. she more than adequate to impress me in the first sentences. shamrock, the durrow, all are in compact shape unfinish us in final world. i thirsty of her words in the end of her poet.
absolutely enigmatic
absolutely enigmatic
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.
Worth it just to read "Once":
"The lovers in an Irish story never had good fortune.
They fled the king's anger. They lay on the forest floor.
They kissed at the edge of death."
"The lovers in an Irish story never had good fortune.
They fled the king's anger. They lay on the forest floor.
They kissed at the edge of death."
Beautiful, beautiful look at love, in all sorts of terms. Perhaps the most poignant poem in this book is "Quarantine." Gorgeous work.
Loved this collection! "Quarantine" is a heartbreakingly beautiful poem and should be read by everyone.
To my mind, Ireland's (well, California's) premier poet. That includes Seamus.
The poems about her marriage are particularly powerful.
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