SOURCE: "A Passion for the Ordinary," in Women's Review of Books, Vol. IX, No. 7, April, 1992, pp. 19-20.

In the following review, Allen-Randolph calls the author's Outside History "a retrospective of Boland's most mature and best work."

Poetry in Ireland is still very much dominated by a male bardic tradition. Compared to their male contemporaries, women poets in Ireland get very little recognition and arouse tremendous controversy. Even as I write, the arts pages and opinion columns of Irish newspapers are crackling with a furious exchange of fire over the recently published Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, the most comprehensive reconfiguration of the Irish canon in this century. It seems the all-male editorial committee failed to notice the contribution Irish women have made to social change and contemporary writing in the last quarter century, and their omissions have become the focal point in the continuing debate over women's...