Object Lessons

'I have put this book together, not as a prose narrative is usually constructed, but as a poem might be: in turnings and returnings. In parts which find and repeat themselves and re-state the argument until it loses its reasonable edge and hopefully becomes a sort of cadence.'

In Object Lessons Eavan Boland meditates on womanhood, nationhood, and the relationship, for a writer, between the two. Deeply personal, focused on the places and times of her own lived experience, Object Lessons finds in the details of one writer's life the larger significances that link the individual to a community, culture, a history and a future. Boland explores what it means to move from being the object of a poem to being its author, what it means to claim a radically new space as a woman and a poet, while retaining a verifying sense of continuity and connection. The book becomes a portrait of a critical imagination making a new path, finding new meaning in the objects it encounters.