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Eavan Boland Biography

Eavan Boland (born 24 September 1944) is an Irish poet, author, professor, and activist who has been active since the 1960s. She is currently a professor at Stanford University, where she has taught since 1996. Her work deals with the Irish national identity, and the role of women in Irish history. A number of poems from Boland's poetry career are studied by Irish students who take the Leaving Certificate.

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Eavan Boland Quotes

Beauty has as many meanings as man has moods.

Beauty, Man, Meanings, Men, Mood, Moods

I once gave a workshop and I asked the women poets there, If you went back to that little town you've come from - these were from small towns - would you say, I'm a poet? And one of them said, If I said I was a poet in that town, they'd think I didn't wash my windows. And that stayed with me for so long, the sense of the collective responsibility of someone as against the individual thing it takes to be a poet.

Long, Responsibility, Said, Sense, Thinking, Windows

Poetry is one of the most fugitive arts: it can be assigned to memory, taken and hidden in the mind, smuggled into smoky cabin back rooms, recited there and then conveyed only by speech to another person. It is therefore the most likely to survive colonization.

Art, Arts, Memories, Poetry, Speech, Taken

The United States' poetry emerged when there was a high literacy rate in the United States, even in the 19th century. People read the poetry when it was written. In Ireland, there was a poor literacy rate and people remember that poetry. That was handed on as a memorial tradition.

19Th, Literacy, Memorial, People, United, United States

To be an Irish poet after that 19th century in which there was such a struggle toward the light, I think still will always be in the hearts of the writers of my generation and the generations before and hopefully the generations after.

Heart, Irish, Poet, Struggle, Thinking, Toward

I'm really fortunate to be at Stanford. I go home every 10 weeks, but Stanford apart from being just a wonderful university is one of the places that are part of a great conversation.

Apart, Home, Week, Weeks, Wonderful

Flesh is heretic. My body is a witch. I am burning it.

Body, Burning, Flesh, Heretic

I have always loved American poetry, which is very different from Irish poetry.

American, American Poetry, Different, Loved, Poetry

Sleep in a world, your final sleep has woken

Final, Finals, Sleep, World

If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift.

Diminish, Gift, Grief, Ifs

I loved the illusion, the conviction, the desire - whatever you want to call it - that the words were agents rather than extensions of reality. That they made my life happen, rather than just recorded it happening.

Agents, Call, Desire, Happen, Reality

Love will heal What language fails to know

Failing, Fails, Heal, Know, Language

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

Language, Poetry, Poetry Is, Shadow, Starts

. . . We love fog because it shifts old anomalies into the elements surrounding them. It gives relief from a way of seeing

Fog, Giving, Relief, Seeing, Surrounding

It has always seemed to me a great honor to be called an Irish poet. I don't think I will ever lose that, but it's also a great honor to be a woman poet. I put those things together.

Honor, Poet, Seemed, Thinking, Together, Woman