SOURCE: Sullivan, Nell. “Righting Irish Poetry: Eavan Boland's Revisionary Struggle.” Colby Quarterly 23, no. 4 (December 1997): 334-48.

In the following essay, Sullivan perceives Boland's “revisionary struggle” with Irish mythology, which depicts women in subordinate and passive roles as an attempt to “repossess” Irish poetry for women.

My muse must be better than those of men who made theirs in the image of their myth. 

—Boland, “Envoi”

Traditionally, the envoi sends the poet's work out into the world with modest hopes, anxious disclaimers, and humble apologies. But in her poem “Envoi” from Outside History, Evan Boland unabashedly announces her agenda: “My muse must be better than those of men / who made theirs in the image of their myth.” She must exceed the male poetics of Ireland to correct the mythology inherited from the male tradition because its dangerous appropriation of the female image estranges women from their own bodies and abets...