Sheltering with Eavan Boland

Like many people, I was saddened to hear of the death of Eavan Boland.  Unlike many, I don't have a personal story:  I never studied with her or heard her read.  That's not unusual--there are many poets who mean a great deal to me, but I've never had live interactions with them.

I say I never studied with her, but in a way, that's not true.  When we moved to South Florida in 1998, I was delighted to discover that our public library had such rich resources.  I devoured many a volume of Boland's, and I often came across her nonfiction when I read the other books that were poetry adjacent (how to write, why to write, who to include, how to look at the work of others--those kinds of books).

I read a lot of her work as I tried to teach myself the elements of formalism that I never learned very well in undergraduate or graduate school.  I came across an essay of hers where she talked about meter.  She said that when she sees a young woman bent over her notebook, counting syllables on her fingers, she feels a moment of connection, because she knows what the younger poet is trying to do.

I first came across that quote 20ish years ago.  I can't find it now, but every time I count syllables, I think of it.

As with many female poets, Eavan Boland is important to me because in her space as part of the generation just before me, she opened many a door and made sure to leave those doors open for those of us who were younger.

And it wasn't just younger poets, younger female poets.  She was always on the lookout for what we were losing as the poetry business became professionalized.  This essay gives a taste of that:  "Once I thought there was a broad tolerance for this [the poet who wanted a more private, internal life]. Now I’m not so sure. In Ireland, or the us or the uk, the tilt is towards the poet who can navigate the worlds of the university, the institution, the community, the reading series, the community workshop, the literary festival. There has been a gradual, perhaps calcifying professionalism which requires of  a poet a standard of  behavior and communality which poets were once exempted from. I was never uncritical of that exemption. But now, somehow, I wish I saw more of it."  (lack of capitalization of country names maintained from original source)

I also think of something that Eavan Boland said about our current time, an article which I can't find, but do remember. She said that we're losing the first book because it's so hard to get first books published. By the time we get a "first book" from a poet, it's what would have been their second or third book, had they had a publishing career that was more common to the 20th century.

Of course, many voices that are published today would have been lost then--never published at all.

I am grateful for all the ways that Eavan Boland worked to make sure that more voices from our time, and from past times, have been preserved.  And I'm grateful for her own words.  This poem, with it's stark presentation of love, seems appropriate for our pandemic time.