Eavan Boland

Against Love Poetry

A collection of poems about marriage by one of our most celebrated poets.

These powerful poems are written against the perfections and idealizations of traditional love poetry. The man and woman in these poems are husband and wife, custodians of ordinary, aging human love. They are not figures in a love poem. Time is their essential witness, and not their destroyer. A New York Times Notable Book and a Newsday Favorite Book of 2001.

"Admirably tough-minded...eloquently expressed.... [Boland] is against thoughtless submission but very much for sacrifices in partnership that result in greater mutual understanding."—New York Times Book Review, a Notable Book of 2001

"Boland's loyalty to the plain words that call forth a whole past keeps the peat fires burning decades after they were lit."—The New Yorker