A Journey With Two Maps: Becoming a Woman Poet

I'd recommend this book to anyone in my circumstances--I'm a bit bewildered after an MFA, after attending several workshops and conferences and am now trying to put myself into a firm poetic self and place. Her discussion of the domestic and the ways in which one can look into or out of said poems were particularly helpful for me, who always feels that nervous "poetess" legacy she mentions so well.

Jul 02, Janice Wilson Stridick rated it it was amazing. Rich, intelligent discussion of the many dichotomies we all face, but especially women who wish to create work of depth and value. Many times I found lines to keep, savor, that sum up quandaries I've mulled over -- Boland provides a welcome perspective. She sheds much light on female authority and how to win it, winnow it, savor it. I loved reading these essays, and recommend them highly. Sep 25, Elizabeth Shafer rated it it was amazing. A subtle and insightful description of Boland's personal and poetic conflicts in her long journey caught between historical patriarchal traditions and her lyric feminist voice as she was influenced by women poets, and her recognition that both 'maps' inform her work and are essential to it.

Jul 13, Antonio Delgado rated it it was amazing. Colonization is a territorial force imposed to individuals but also to a particular gender. In poetry, its impact has been ignored. She writes like an architect, quite aware of the importance of the foundation her words are building up for many generations to come.

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2. Becoming a Woman Poet.
3. A Journey With Two Maps.
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Apr 04, Shawn rated it really liked it. I feel enchanted by this book. The spell has the characteristics of great upper division or grad school classes I've taken where I feel completely in sync with the themes and am inspired by the material, and a sense that I am intoxicated as I begin to apprehend Boland's aesthetic. I don't know much of any of the poetry Boland examines in these essays.

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I know about some of the poets, but am really underprepared for the specifics of any interpretation of their works. This allows me to be easily led I feel enchanted by this book. This allows me to be easily led by the author to understand what she values in them and how they contribute greatly and essentially to both the canons of Poetry and Women's Poetry.

Each essay shines a light on both Boland's view of how poetry matters and how the poet matters to the history of poetic voice, form and style. It's a pretty complicated argument, and I get a strong buzz as I consider how each essay contributes to and complicates this or that theme as I complete them. Jun 14, Emma Lawson rated it liked it.

Eavan Boland is an amazing poet. And there are some interesting insights here but there's also repetition and an insistence on the personal which doesn't expand out into anything that I can get hold of. The reclaiming of the personal, and the domestic, as valid poetic subjects is an important point. But I didn't really feel it evolved through the book. I've probably missed something here. Jan 30, Vhicy rated it really liked it.

Enjoyed the book; related more to the criticism essays of other woman poets rather than the first part of the book, which described the writer's youth in Ireland. Appreciated the argument about bombastic Romantics overshadowing our own 'less compelling' lives and narratives, and was encouraged by the writer's urging to make our woman experiences worthy of poetry, as well. Apr 10, Jesi rated it really liked it Shelves: Her style and her preoccupations resonate with me so strongly that I always end up writing out pages and pages of her books by hand, just to feel closer to those flawless, flawless sentences.

God, what a writer. Jul 21, Lanora rated it really liked it.

There are two parts to this book. One is a memoir of Eavan Boland's journey to becoming a poet. The other is an re-evaluation of a variety of women poets. Both are fascinating reads and made me nostalgic for the luxury of being a student of literature. Jan 10, Alisa Books and Sequins rated it it was amazing.

I was fascinated by how she unearthed her own development as a poet, and I loved how she wrote with so much feeling about the books and poets that meant so much to her. Plus she is just a beautiful writer and many of her sentences and turns of phrase are simply pure pleasure to read. Jun 14, Kathryn rated it liked it. Boland is brilliant, and she has a wonderful way of mixing the personal, the political, and the literary into a coherent theory, but I wasn't able to connect emotionally with her essays in the way that I was hoping to.

May 21, Antonia rated it it was ok Shelves: I expected to like this better than I did. Kept feeling as though I should like it better. Will send to the first person who asks. Feb 10, Marcela rated it really liked it. A must read for any aspiring poet. Nov 20, secondwomn rated it liked it Recommended to secondwomn by: Anna rated it really liked it Jan 08, Bob Cat rated it liked it Sep 28, Sara whittemore rated it really liked it Dec 21, Yvonne rated it really liked it Aug 04, Kristina rated it really liked it Jul 13, Julia rated it it was amazing Jan 04, Cinzia DuBois rated it really liked it Feb 04, Andrew Becker rated it it was amazing Aug 07, But by eroticizing it.

After all, stored in that past is a template of poetic identity which still affects us as women.

When we are young poets it has the power to make us feel subtly less official, less welcome in the tradition than our male contemporaries. If we are not careful, it is that template we will aspire to, alter ourselves for, warp our self-esteem as poets to fit. Where poetry itself was defined by and in our absence. There has been a debate since I was a young poet, about whether women poets should engage with that past at all.

If we do not change that past, it will change us. And I, for one, do not want to become a grateful daughter in a darkened house.

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Her edict to rewrite, remap, and remake is constant throughout the book, as seen in variants of her exhortation:. Can a single writer challenge a collective past? My answer is simple. Not only can, but should. Poetry should be scrubbed, abraded, cleared, and re-stated with the old wash stones of argument and resistance.

It should happen every generation.

A Journey with Two Maps

Challenging tradition and refusing inequality underpins all of her work, as A Journey offers examples, models, and urgency to not believe this work has yet been fulfilled. Boland vividly describes living in a suburb, with two young children in a young marriage, and recognizing rituals within her life that were ordinarily excluded from celebrated poems. She writes of inheriting the mantle of poetic tradition, yet:. The difference was that as a young woman I did so in circumstances which were relatively new … in a house with small children. With a washing machine in the background.

They had debated and subtracted and reduced that relation of the ordinary to the poem so that it was harder than I thought proper to record the life I lived in the poems I wrote. Through this fusion, Boland finds a way to join her voice as a woman and as a poet; through her activism and commitment she has fostered change within the academy and rewritten a relationship to history.

In her insistence, she holds the door open wide for other women to pass through.