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Eavan Boland Quotes


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Quotes by Eavan Boland

Showing 1-10 of 26 Quotes by Eavan Boland

I know now that I began writing in a country where the word 'woman' and the word 'poet' were almost magnetically opposed. One word was used to invoke collective nurture, the other to sketch out self-reflective individualism. Both states were necessary - that much the culture conceded - but they were oil and water and could not be mixed.

~Eavan Boland

Topics: Almost Began Both Collective Could Country Culture Individualism Invoke Know Mixed Much Necessary Now Nurture Oil One Word Opposed Other Out Poet Sketch States Used Water Were Where Woman Word Writing

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Our present will become the past of other men and women. We depend on them to remember it with the complexity with which it was suffered. As others, once, depended on us.

~Eavan Boland

Topics: Become Complexity Depend Depended Men Men And Women Once Other Others Our Past Present Remember Suffered Them Us Which Will Women

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There is nothing settled about a poet's identity. The becoming doesn't stop because the being has been achieved. They proceed together, attached in ways that are hard to be exact about.

~Eavan Boland

Topics: About Achieved Attached Because Becoming Been Being Exact Hard Identity Nothing Poet Proceed Settled Stop Together Ways

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I didn't know how to weigh ideas about poetry. Nothing in the life I lived as a student - and later as wife and mother at the suburban edge of Dublin - suggested I had the wherewithal to do so. But I did have a unit of measurement. It was the measure of my own life.

~Eavan Boland

Topics: About Did Dublin Edge Had How Ideas Know Later Life Lived Measure Measurement Mother My Own Nothing Own Poetry Student Suburban Suggested Unit Weigh Wife

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Poetry begins where language starts: in the shadows and accidents of one person's life.

~Eavan Boland

Topics: Accidents Begins Language Life Person Poetry Shadows Starts Where

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I still believe many poets begin in fear and hope: fear that the poetic past will turn out to be a monologue rather than a conversation. And hope that their voice can be heard as that past turns into a future.

~Eavan Boland

Topics: Begin Believe Conversation Fear Future Heard Hope Many Monologue Out Past Poetic Poets Rather Still Than Turn Turns Voice Will

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New voices in an old art - and women poets have been that for much more than a century - do not diminish the art through the category. They enrich it. They renew it with common quandaries of craft and innovation. The category simply allows the quandaries to be seen more clearly.

~Eavan Boland

Topics: Art Been Category Century Clearly Common Craft Diminish Enrich Innovation More Much New Old Poets Renew Seen Simply Than Through Voices Women

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When I was young, I struggled with authorship: with everything the word meant and failed to mean. Irish poetry was heavy with custom. Sometimes at night, when I tried to write, a ghost hand seemed to hold mine. Where could my life, my language fit in?

~Eavan Boland

Topics: Authorship Could Custom Everything Failed Fit Ghost Hand Heavy Hold Irish Language Life Mean Meant Mine My Life Night Poetry Seemed Sometimes Struggled Tried Where Word Write Young I Tried

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I would come to understand there is no poem separable from its source. I began to see that poems are not just an individual florescence. They are also a vast root system growing down into ideas and understandings. Almost unbidden, they tap into the history and evolution of art and language.

~Eavan Boland

Topics: Almost Also Art Began Come Down Evolution Growing History Ideas Individual Just Language Poem Poems Root See Source System Tap Understand Vast Would

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In those years of the Fifties, in London and New York, I lived, without knowing it, in a time when the profoundest changes were happening: when a radical alteration was getting ready to happen in the way a society saw young girls. And, as a consequence, in the way they saw themselves.

~Eavan Boland

Topics: Alteration Changes Consequence Fifties Getting Girl Happen Happening Knowing Lived London New New York Radical Ready Saw Society Themselves Those Time Way Were Without Years York Young Young Girls

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Biography

Nationality: Irish

Type: Poet

Born: September 24th, 1944

Links

Find Eavan Boland on Amazon

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