The Lost Land: 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 speechfor the everyday and ordinary abrasionof losses such as this"("A Habitable Grief", at p. 32 of The Lost Land,)"What is a colonyif not the brutal truththat when we speakthe 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.

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.

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.

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