Mother Ireland (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Eavan Boland
- First Published: 1995
- Type of Work: Dramatic monologue
- Genres: Poetry, Dramatic monologue
- Subjects: Mothers, Parents and children, Nationalism, Ireland or Irish people
The Poem
“Mother Ireland” is a short poem in free verse in which the speaker is Mother Ireland. The poem repeatedly reminds the reader of the speaker’s presence: every sixth word, on average, is a first-person pronoun (“I,” “me,” “my”). The poem is difficult to classify. It has some qualities of the lyric, with the author speaking through a persona. It sketches the outlines of a story (hence is a narrative), and the story’s scale has epic proportions, though the poem (at only thirty-six lines, 142 words) is obviously not an epic. It might be considered a...
[The entire page is 1626 words long]
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