Historians

Eavan Boland (1944—2020) was the author of more than a dozen volumes of poetry, including Outside History and several volumes of nonfiction, and was coeditor of the anthology The Making of Poem. Born in Dublin, Ireland, she was one of the foremost female voices in Irish literature. She received a Lannan Foundation Award and an American Ireland Fund Literary Award, among other honors. She taught at Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, Bowdoin College, and Stanford University, where she was the director of the creative writing program.

"It is a miraculous task that Eavan Boland set for herself in The Historians: nothing less than the redefining of both history and poetry as ongoing individual consciousness transforming into artistic process. In the book’s first poem, 'The Fire Gilder,' this process occurs before the reader’s eyes, posited as an artist mother’s love of silver and gold, 'one was volatile, one was not.' In exact phenomenal mimicry, Boland demonstrates how memory is separated from knowledge (one volatile, the other not). Each poem is a revelation of a past made new and a present equal in the accuracy of eloquent regard. This book is alive as a legacy for all readers—and for the future where Eavan Boland’s greatness will endure."