Object Lessons: The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time

by Eavan Boland

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.

Genres: Poetry, Memoir, Nonfiction, Irish Literature, Feminism, Biography, Ireland

254 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Born in Dublin in 1944, Eavan Boland studied in Ireland, London and New York. Her first book was published in 1967. She taught at Trinity College, University College Dublin, Bowdoin College, the University of Iowa, and Stanford University. A pioneering figure in Irish poetry, Boland's works include The Journey and other poems (1987), Night Feed (1994), The Lost Land (1998) and Code (2001). Her poems and essays appeared in magazines such as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Kenyon Review and American Poetry Review. She was a regular reviewer for the Irish Times. She was married to the novelist Kevin Casey.

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

[O]ver a relatively short time--certainly no more than a generation or two--women have moved from being the subjects and objects of Irish poems to being the authors of them. It is a momentous transit. It is also a disruptive one. . . . What is more, such a transit . . . is almost invisible to the naked eye. Critics may well miss it or map it inaccurately.

Eavan Boland crafts a luminous memoir in the form of literary criticism, examining the coming-of-age of an Irish woman poet. Beginning with the lonely, anonymous death of her maternal grandmother in a Dublin hospital at the age of thirty-one, Boland shows the silenced, the struggling, and finally, the emerging voice of the Irish woman. Object Lessons is a meditation on identity: what it means to be Irish, a notion Boland feels she missed, living her early childhood in London and New York, the daughter of a diplomat; what it means to be a poet, a calling Boland felt early, yet explored as an intellectual pursuit, rather than an emotional one; and what it means to be a woman, which becomes this book's ellipses.

Boland was born into post-war Ireland, came of age in the paradigm-shifting 60s, and found herself a young wife and mother during Ireland's violent, turbulent 70s. Throughout it all, she circles in and around her national, artistic, and sexual identities, working to bring them together and give them voice through her poetry. She challenges the myth of the Irish poet and the objectification of the Irish woman as symbol of national identity, reduced to the role of crone or angel.

Although Object Lessons is very specifically about the Irish cultural, political and domestic experience, it is a graceful treatise on poetry and feminism. She opens the door to the poets who influenced her thought, including Paula Meehan, Adrienne Rich, and Sylvia Plath, and speaks with quiet authority about form and theme.

The more I thought about it, the more uneasy I became. The wrath and grief of Irish history seemed to me, as it did to many, one of our true possessions. Women were part of that wrath, had endured that grief. It seemed to me a species of human insult that at the end of all, in certain Irish poems, they should become elements of style rather than aspects of truth.

Having so recently read Lyndall Gordon's excellent Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft and of course, Virginia Woolf's incomparable A Room of One's Own I believe Boland's comment could extend to nearly any society at any age, including the present. And poetry could extend to prose, to politics, to the family.

Eavan Boland's clear and lovely poetic voice translates well into her essay prose. This was a inspiring, perceptive read.

[Aisling Coase · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most fantastic insight into Boland’s mind and process - the same moment repeatedly returned to, unpicked, looked at from both sides; a sifting through of precedent and history; on being both a woman and a poet and trying to become a woman poet. Fantastic chapter on the sexual vs erotic, and how each changes under a woman’s pen. Slightly read like a series of isolated essays which could have been edited together more tightly.

[Iria · Rating 3 out of 5]

I ended up reading this book because I asked my friend to send me poetry collections but she sent me this. While there are some parts that I found very interesting as an academic in Irish studies, I prefer Boland's poetry, which I have read before and loved it.

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book I will be returning to again and again.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funnily enough, I don't particularly care for several of the poems that Boland is most famous for. However, this is one of those rare cases where the quotes on the outside of the book from reviewers are spot on...in particular, the one that mentioned "its serpentine strategy of memoir lifted into epiphany." How true! Take the care poets give to each word in a poem, and multiply that into a novel. Some of the prose is just fantastically beautiful. Of course, Boland's struggles with reconciling her gender's history as the object of Irish poetry with her own attempts to create new poetic objects is also incredibly interesting from a feminist standpoint. It always makes me hopeful to read about intelligent women who truly own their feminisms.

Less stars because, sometimes, it is a little slow. I wished the parts where I felt absolutely engrossed in the beauty of her musings were closer together via some careful editing. Still, if you have any interest in feminism, poetry, or Ireland, a thought-provoking read.

[Cynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a luminous book about women poets. I liken it to "The Artist as a Young Man" and also love her poetry. The only drawback is that you need to be very familiar with Irish history. Nation, heritage, womanhood, and poetry is seamlessly interweaved and there are often no handy gloss of a certain historical event. Even so, an intelligent reader can gather what they need from context and enjoy the book.

[Lis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was veeeeery slow but most likely worth it because of all of the wisdom she's able to impart. I just wish that there was less time spent describing eeevverryythiinggg about Ireland that she sees.

[Sara Lamers · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is more nonfiction (craft theory) than memoir, but it reads like a poem.

[YZ]

It's doing something to me.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful memoir written by Eavan Boland, one of the most prominent Irish writers who really was one of the first female Irish poets to bring the female experience to the forefront of poetry at that time. In her memoir, she writes about the intricacies of nationalism, sexuality, the Irish rural landscape, a restless struggle against the tradition she was born into.

“I began to write in an Ireland where the word ‘woman’ and the word ‘poet’ seemed to be in some sort of magnetic opposition to each other."

Lyrical and prosaic, a large portion of this book describes Ireland in great detail. The voice within it is both delicate and empowered. Boland ponders how many lives are left out of history, and how to come to terms with her own writing style and form that greatly differed from famous male poets in Ireland.

She concludes her thought about form in poetry in this gorgeous line: "I sensed that real form—the sort that made time turn and wander when you read a poem—came from a powerful meeting between a hidden life and a hidden chance in language. If they found each other, then each could come out of hiding."

[r. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every poet carries within them a silent constituency, made of suffering and failed expression. Judith
and the “compound ghost” that she is—for she is, of course, an amalgam of many women—is mine. It is difficult, if not impossible, to explain to men who are poets—writing as they are with centuries of expression behind them—how emblematic are the unexpressed lives of other women to the woman poet, how intimately they are her own. And how, in many ways, that silence is as much part of her tradition as the troubadours are of theirs. “You who maintain that some animals sob sorrowfully, that the dead have dreams,” writes Rimbaud, “try to tell the story of my downfall and my slumber. I no longer know how to speak.” How to speak. I believe that if a woman poet survives, if she sets out on that distance and arrives at the other end, then she has an obligation to tell as much as she knows of the ghosts within her, for they make up, in essence, her story as well. And that is what I intend to do now.

[Collin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never read memoir or poetic/feminist theory this intensely written. The prose is so controlled, the images, ideas, and emotions so specifically drawn. The passion beneath is magnified not because of bluster or exclamation points or sarcastic irony or display but through the lack of them.

I have two dozen pages bookmarked in my copy, quotes to go back to and read and maybe copy down somewhere. When Boland grieves, she doesn't do so in hopelessness; she looks at the long tradition of enforced female silence and shows sadness, shows anger, but through action: through developing, critiquing, and breaking through on her own relationships to poetry and womanhood. I'd be tempted to say it's remarkable, brave, inspiring, but I don't know if she'd like to be described by those words. After reading the book, I wonder if she wouldn't want her readers to see the process of dis- and reassembling the poetry of tradition as, rather, a necessity.

[Catherine Ayres · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book

[Kathryn Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for my diss !!! Eavan boland GOATTTTTT. Her insights to things are so romanticised but love her

[Margaret Capozzolo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Being female, being Irish, and being a poet are the three elements of her life that Eavan Boland dissects in this book of biography/literary criticism. Perhaps it was my sharing of only one of those characteristics--womanhood--that made it hard for me to appreciate the depth of her dilemma. I could understand her discussion of the objectification of women in political or nationalistic poetry, but could not fully appreciate the depth of difficulty this posed for her. And, although I love her poetry, I'm not sure I needed to understand the psychic pain that went into writing it. It was not until the final pages of this book, when Boland chose to analyze four poems by women poets--one being herself--that I finally felt on board with what she was trying to get across. All in all, I'd much rather read her poems than her analyzes of how she came to write them.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finally found someone who articulates how confused I used to feel as a young girl trying to relate to the history of my country--sexuality got in the way. I also appreciate that Boland discusses how one might struggle with the inscription of one's self into a place when one, such as she, such as I, have moved away from and then back to a city, a region, a country, so that, at least speaking for myself, she feels she is in the place but not of it. This sense of location/dislocation comes across in a number of her poems.

Update: At last finished reading this book after a long hiatus; I bogged down on the difference between the public and the political poem in the essay "Subject Matters." After a period of grappling with the "I" in my own writing, a tendency to loose the "I" in the "we," I understand the difference relates to the issues of exerting personal authority and that might be more a struggle for women poets.

I feel this book of essays is a wonderfully unassuming and illustrative discussion of considerations for any poet who wishes to resist the objectification of their particular cohort by tradition, history, geography, or any other force that can be used to silence a voice.

[Cher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boland is one of my favorite poets of all time and reading this memoir is like reading an extended poem. She can't seem to escape her prose style but her story is one of haunting cultural displacement. I would really only use this in the upper high school grades as reading her prose can be a bit difficult plus many of her reflections are ones they could better identify with. I also would probably not use this in its entirety but instead find clips and segments to use for a more focused lesson plan. But as an adult reader I can clearly identify with her struggle to find her self in her new role as student, then writer, then wife, then mother, and finally as a writer/mother/wife combination. Her search for individuality as a young woman is a universal experience yet Boland is able to provide fascinating insight into displacement from Ireland and its tumultuous past. And in her writer capacity she searched for her own voice, one that reflects and rejoices domesticity and suburban life, a voice that is female, not objectifying the body, utilizing it as a symbol or monicker but representing her mind, body and soul.

[Skye · Rating 4 out of 5]

I absolutely devoured this book. I met Eavan Boland at an event at Boston College last year, and when my friend gave me this book, I figured I'd pick it up here and there, reading a chapter when I felt in the mood. I was wrong! The book sweeps you along so quickly and I underlined constantly, because there were so many powerful quotes. I especially loved the section on what it is like to learn Latin as a woman, since women were excluded from Latin literature. Since I teach Latin, I was moved by the description of her mastering Latin grammar and seeing the power of language. This is a must-read for any poet, and a must-buy for any friend. I usually go through my library when I move, giving away books which I don't feel like lugging from place to place. Something tells me this one is going to make it into the "keep" pile every time.

[Sonja · Rating 2 out of 5]

I probably shouldn't call this a "read" book because I only read the first half and lightly skimmed over the second half. Poetry is not my cup of tea but this book is more like a memoir - or started out that way. I always find people's lives interesting - their families, how they grew up, etc. But the author kept reiterating all about her "nation, language, sexuality, womanhood" in about as many different ways as possible and, frankly, half of them were so convoluted that it left me in a fog. I got her point and could understand her position but being told that once or twice was enough. I'm sure she's very intelligent and does a good job at her craft but this book just wasn't for me.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did it! This was very slow going for me. It had the tendency to be quite repetitive (which I believe the author is well aware of as she mentions that she will come back to the same moments frequently early on in the book). There is a complexity in the writing that meant I had to read carefully, and oftentimes more than once through. However, there were countless illuminating and magnificent passages, containing nuanced and impressive images and ideas. Much of the writing is absolutely five-star quality, but certain parts were quite dense (or perhaps beyond my reach intellectually) and detracted somewhat from my full enjoyment of this book.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just started to read Boland and she is very addicting... I am totally in love already. Stay tuned.
Boland gives us a perspective on Ireland that I had not considered. It is the Emerald Isle for sure but underneath is a repressive and male dominated country that she encounters when writing her poems.
She changes her style of poetry to better reflect her real inner life and that made all the difference for her. She is one of 10 celebrated Irish poets, all the rest are male. Try that one for starters.
She is also brilliant and it is a distinct pleasure to read her prose. I only wish I had half her talent.

[Yvonne · Rating 4 out of 5]

With her trademark adept use of language and metaphor, Boland presents a series of prose pieces meditating on her own development into one of the major poets writing in English. Famous both for her talent and her courage in confronting the male literary establishment in Ireland (and the English speaking world at large), Boland's work is an essential read for any writer or student of writing in English.

[Vicki]

"But already I knew--from a few mysterious moments of writing--something about form. Already I sensed that real form--the sort that made time turn and wander when you read a poem--came from a powerful meeting between a hidden life and a hidden chance in language. If they found each other, then each could come out of hiding" (Boland 116).

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

A poets biographical journey of how she came to find her poetic voice within the context of her own experiences as a woman, being Irish, an immigrant, and an object within the male Irish poetic tradition.

Even non-poets who enjoy biography will find her perspectives intriguing as we all struggle to find our way, especially artists, within the prevailing norms.

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Prose in poetry...each word of this was poetry. A reflection on nationhood, history (my favorite part) and her connection to it as an Irish woman and poet. Reading this was similar to looking at photos of the past, the countryside, or a study of close-up portraits of face's from the past. Going to dive into her poetry next.

[heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stunning look at the experience of an Irish woman poet that simultaneously examines the human quest for identity, the complications of nationhood, and the limits of language. One of those life-changing books for me...read at exactly the right moment.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eavan Boland spoke my mind and my feelings as she described the inner struggles of her two paths in life. I began this book sitting in a Irish lit class, and kept looking around the room to see if others felt that shocking sense of connection. Ever since that day, I am a huge Eavan Boland fan.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting for its first person perspective and historical importance (women finding their voice in a male-dominated poetry market), but not a page-turner. I wish the prose was more gripping. I wanted to like this book a lot more than I actually did.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

senior thesis

[Emily Holt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boland's insight and reflection provides the basis for my strongest beliefs about the role of writing in society and the role of a female poet.