SOURCE: Russell, Richard Rankin. “Boland's ‘Lava Cameo.’” The Explicator 60, no. 2 (winter 2002): 114-17.

In the following essay, Russell argues that a close reading of Boland's “Lava Cameo” “illustrates how its subject, tone, sentence structure, and diction enable Boland to imagine this scene, sympathetically write herself into it, and establish a new relationship with her grandparents and her own personal history.”

Eavan Boland's 1995 volume of poetry, In a Time of Violence, explores her imaginative re-creations of history. The middle section of that volume, “Legends,” contains a remarkable poem entitled “Lava Cameo,” which depicts a moment when her grandmother met her grandfather disembarking in Cork. A close reading of this poem illustrates how its subject, tone, sentence structure, and diction enable Boland to imagine this scene, sympathetically write herself into it, and establish a new relationship with her grandparents and her own personal history.

In “Lava Cameo,” the opening essay of...