Code

"Code" consists of a group of shorter poems and one of Eavan Boland's major sequences which extends the thematic concerns first traced in "The Journey" 15 years ago. Time passes: the poet's own situation as woman, mother and wife changes. The sense that earlier poems have made is not invalidated; it is qualified in a new time and place. The feminist perspectives of the poet, in the marriage sequence that stands at the beginning of the book and the ode with which the book concludes, take crucial new risks with language. Boland moves beyond the "broken narratives between women" towards new forms of exploration and affirmation.