SOURCE: A review of In a Time of Violence, in Southern Humanities Review, Vol. 30, No. 3, Summer, 1996, pp. 304-7.

In the following review, Smith asserts that Boland's In a Time of Violence "counters any notion that poetry has retreated from the public forum or shies away from issues of great pitch and moment."

As an explorer of the terrible beauties Yeats witnessed and as a creator of language which radiates with both lyrical and intellectual beauty, Eavan Boland may be equal to any poet writing today. That she finds these beauties in the hard work of rescuing her gender and Irish culture from repression, censorship, and self-imposed silence is both astonishing and inspiring. Her essays, introductions, and poems examine the "wrath and grief" that comprise Irish history as she lifts her voice to speak for a gender explored and exploited almost as if it were a "primitive" territory. Striking...