The Sealey Challenge, Day Twenty-one: The Historians by Eavan Boland

I do admire Boland for her ability to be a mother and a poet, without (or so it seems to me, with my limited knowledge) compromising either. And there is undoubtedly a musicality to her poetry, and a sense of place not unlike that of some Welsh poets I've read. At her best, this sense of place and time infuses her work and transports me. I've had the same experience with Seamus Heaney and Gillian Clarke.  But all too often I feel that she is speaking to me from a distance as a lecturer, in prose rather than poetry. Perhaps what I am trying to articulate is that when language is direct, I prefer it to be either stark or ironic. When it is direct and a narrative, I keep waiting for an impact, a building of tension or metaphor - and I get it sometimes with Boland, as in "The Fire Glider." But only sometimes. I think I want...well, I want more poetry in her poetry.