. . . We love fog because it shifts old anomalies into the elements surrounding them. It gives relief from a way of seeing
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A poet must authentically convey the truth of human experiences related to time for their work to endure.
In this quote, Eavan Boland emphasizes the importance of truthfulness in poetry, particularly concerning the concept of time. She argues that a poet's work must resonate with the human experiences of time, including the joys and sorrows that come with it; otherwise, that work will fade into obscurity, lacking the essential connection to the human condition that allows it to endure over time.
Themes
PoetTruthTimeHuman ExperienceEnduranceEmotion
In practice
Example use cases
In a literary discussion about the relevance of poetry in expressing human experiences over time.
More from Eavan Boland
All quotes →Poetry begins where language starts: in the shadows and accidents of one person’s life.
Eavan BolandRead
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 BolandRead
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
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
As far as I was concerned, it was the absence of women in the poetic tradition which allowed women in the poems to be simplified. The voice of a woman poet would, I was sure, have precluded such distortion. It did not exist.
Eavan BolandRead
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