SOURCE: "Finding a Voice Where She Found a Vision," in P. N. Review, Vol. 21, No. 1, September-October, 1994, pp. 13-17.

In the following essay, Allen-Randolph traces Boland's career and defends her as a major poet.

It is hard to think of an Irish poet whose work has, over the last two decades, shown as much growth and courage as Eavan Boland's. Eight years ago the widespread establishment view in Ireland had branded her a technically gifted but minor poet. Today, with the recent publication by Carcanet of her latest volume of poetry In a Time of Violence and a selection of her prose essays on the way from Norton, she is increasingly officialized as the feminine laureate, or simply, and more accurately, as a major poet.

The quick shifts in recent years of Boland's status—from woman poet, to feminist poet, to leading woman poet, to major poet—reflect the...