SOURCE: Paddon, Seija H. “The Diversity of Performance/Performance as Diversity in the Poetry of Laura (Riding) Jackson and Eavan Boland.” English Studies in Canada 22, no. 4 (December 1996): 425-39.

In the following essay, Paddon contrasts the role of language in the poetry of Riding and Eavan Boland.

I am hands And face And feet And things inside of me That I can't see. 

What knows in me? Is it only something inside That I can't see? 

(“Herself” 1-8)

The lines are by Laura Riding, or Laura Riding Gottschalk, or, as she is best known, Laura (Riding) Jackson. While one sorts out the reasons behind the shifts in her authorial name, its history provides the material for an interesting commentary on the shifts that occur in names and naming when the process is linked, for instance, with changes in a female author's civil status. My focus in this paper, however...