. . . We love fog because it shifts old anomalies into the elements surrounding them. It gives relief from a way of seeing
Eavan BolandRead
Flesh is heretic._x000D_ My body is a witch._x000D_ I am burning it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the struggles of identity and the body, suggesting a conflict between physical existence and spiritual or intellectual beliefs.
Eavan Boland's quote explores the profound tension between the physical body and the more intangible aspects of identity and belief. By referring to the body as 'heretic' and 'witch,' Boland highlights how society often perceives the female body as sinful or problematic, and the act of 'burning' it symbolizes a rejection of these societal norms, as well as an assertion of agency over one's own identity and existence. The stark imagery evokes the historical witch hunts, suggesting the speaker's desire to transcend or repudiate the constraints placed upon them by a patriarchal culture.
Themes
BodyIdentityAgencySocietyFemaleFreedom
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in discussions about body positivity and feminism.
More from Eavan Boland
All quotes →Poetry begins where language starts: in the shadows and accidents of one person’s life.
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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?
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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 BolandRead
If a poet does not tell the truth about time, his or her work will not survive it. Past or present, there is a human dimension to time, human voices within it, and human griefs ordained by it.
Eavan BolandRead
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 BolandRead
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