What does it mean to be a writer in the context of a country s centuries of uncertainty and upheaval? How does an Irish writer define Irish writing? The writers here, who range from early legends like Yeats to modern masters like Roddy Doyle, address these questions through their sources: the land, the Church, the past, and changing politics and literary styles. The book begins with William Yeats and Augusta Gregory s dazzling meditations on the founding of the National Theatre as a venue for a new Irish imagination. Lady Gregory herself is the subject of pithy essays by Kate O Brien and Colm...

This illuminating anthology follows the sonnet through its various moments and makers over five and a half centuries. Edward Hirsch and Eavan Boland, two of our foremost poets, focus on vicissitudes, paying particular attention to how individual poets from Shakespeare to Strand have claimed these fourteen lines: lengthened them, shortened them, elaborated on them, and, in turn, been defined by them. Three sections "The Sonnet in the Mirror," "The Sonnet Goes to Different Lengths," and "The Sonnet extraordinary durability and its reinventions. The collection opens with personal introductions...

An Origin Like Water: Poems 1967-1987 confirmed Eavan Boland's place at the forefront of modern Irish poetry. New Collected Poems now brings the record of her achievement up to date, adding material from her subsequent volumes and filling out key poems from the early years. Following the chronology of publication, the reader experiences the exhilarating sense of development, now incremental, now momentous. Boland's work traces a measured process of emancipation from conventions and stereotypes, writing now in a space she has cleared not by violent rejection, but by dialogue,...