Lace (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Eavan Boland
- First Published: 1985
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Language or languages, Authors or writers, Communication, Poetry or poets, Creative process, Royal courts or courtiers, Lace or lace making
The Poem
A compact lyric in free verse, “Lace” consists of thirty-five lines irregularly divided into eight sections or verse paragraphs. The title evokes a strong visual image, the significance of which becomes clear only as the poem progresses; the tatted filaments of a piece of lace represent, for Eavan Boland, the interlacings of language, sound, and sense as she labors in her notebook to compose an ideal poem. “Lace,” then, is a specialized kind of lyric, because it presents the reader with a version of the writer’s poetics; it is a poem about how, in Boland’s...
[The entire page is 1506 words long]
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