Eavan Boland: Poems Literary Elements

The poem ‘’And Soul’’ is told from the perspective of a first person narrator. The fact that the narrator recalls the events from a first person point of view makes the event even more personal and tragic as the narrator talks about her mother’s death.

The poems are all modernist poems and thus there is not form and meter.

In the poem ‘’The War Horse’’ the narrator looks out her window and sees a horse on the fields in the middle of the night. The image of the horse awakes in her the belief that the human life is not as important as one would think. To transmit this idea, she compares a rotting human corpse with a trampled piece of vegetation. This comparison also has the purpose of showing just how little we think about others and how we have the capability to distance ourselves from the pain felt by other human beings.

We find alliteration in the lines ‘’ in case you thought this was a gentle art/follow this man on a moonless night’’ in the poem ‘’My Country in Darkness’’. The alliteration in this instance is used by the narrator to urge the reader to action, in this case to continue reading and being interested in the like of the man.

An ironic element is presented in the poem ‘’And Soul’’ when the narrator describes the destructive force of water while also mentioning how humans are almost entirely made out of the same substance.

The poems are all meditative poems.

The poem ‘’Domestic Violence’’ is set in an unknown town and the action spans during winter and spring. Some of the action also takes place inside a home, more precisely in the kitchen where a husband and wife talk.

The tone used in the poem ‘’The Pomegranate’’ is a desperate one, suggested by the common use of the exclamation mark and by the short sentences used to transmit the idea of despair to create the impression that time is running out.

The protagonist in the poem ‘’The Pomegranate’’ is the narrator who tries to protect herself and her child from temptations. The antagonist is the rest of the world that tries to corrupt the narrator’s daughter in some way or another.

The major conflict in the poem ‘’And Soul’’ is between life and death.

The poem ‘’The War Horse’’ reaches its climax when the horse disappears into the night. In that moment, every person watching the horse from the window sighs in relief.

The idea that the horse in ‘’The War Horse’’ is something everyone will be afraid of is foreshadowed by the narrator who claims that not even death can affect the horse. This has the purpose of giving the horse mythical proportions and making it a beast better left alone and not engaged with.

The idea transmitted in the beginning of the poem ‘’Domestic Violence’’ is that the poem will deal with the problems a married couple faced. This is however an understatement as in the later stanzas it is revealed that the poem is actually about national identity.

The poem ‘’The Pomegranate’’ centers mainly around the narrator and the relationship with her daughter. The narrator of the poem related the events from the perspective of a first person subjective point of view and this only makes the events related appear even more real and personal. Towards the middle of the poem, the narrator recalls an instance when she had to take her daughter into her arms and run away with her, protecting her from wasps and bees. As they passed by many trees, the narrator was stuck with the realization that winter was coming and there was nothing she could do to stop it. The impending winter is used in this context as an allusion to the future hardships the narrator will have to endure. The fact that the narrator notices these things while she is carrying her daughter also suggest that maybe these hardships are related to the daughter in one way or another.

The rain in the poem ‘’And Soul’’ is used to make reference to the idea of decay and death in general. The rain in the poem is extremely destructive, dissolving everything left outside and drowning the crops in the fields. The fact that the rain is also associated with the narrator’s mother’s death also suggests that its destructive powers are absolute.

We find personification in the line ‘’that rose he smashed frays’’ in the poem ‘’The War Horse’’.

We find a hyperbole in the line ‘’ opulent horizon and obedient skies’’ in the poem ‘’The Harbor’’.

We find an onomatopoeia in the line ‘’ whisper in their ear’’ in the poem ‘’Outside History’’