SOURCE: "In Common Usage: Eavan Boland's Poetic Voice," in Eire-Ireland: A Journal of Irish Studies, Vol. 28, Summer, 1993, pp. 100-15.

In the following essay, Consalvo argues that "Boland is a literary voice which cannot, and must not, be left to reside in the marginalia of the Irish literary canon."

Eavan Boland's literary achievement has established her as one of Ireland's foremost poetic voices. Born in 1945, Boland published New Territory, her first collection of poetry, in 1967. Her second collection, The War Horse, appeared in 1975. Since then, she has established herself as one of Ireland's leading literary figures with such works as In Her Own Image, Night Feed, and The Journey and Other Poems. Boland's most recent collection, Outside History, appeared in 1990. With the publication of her essay A Kind of Scar, she has become an outspoken critic of the traditional Irish patriarchy and a controversial figure within the Irish literary...