It is important to familiarize yourself with more than what is just being plastered on a campaign poster, a lot of which is similar to “myth”. As I hope you are aware on May 25th 2018 the citizens of Ireland will vote whether to repeal the 8th amendment in our constitution or not to do so. We tend to take refuge in cosy ‘myths’.Īs the weeks draw closer, now is the time for our society to make the right approach to a global issue facing the women of our time. Stars burn out and take years to be discovered, just like it takes the Irish population a long time to open their eyes and see the actual truth to issues among us. Basically showing the truth of how much distance exists. She cleverly mentions her own life experiences and compares them to “these stars whose light appears”. Similarly to what Boland is trying to portray, I’ve thought about the disenfranchised Irish society, focusing on women’s health. So why is this poems relevancy of great magnitude? For too long now, elements of our society have been marginalized, issues facing our growing culture have been left too long “outside history”. Those rivers, those roads clotted as firmaments with the dead.Īs we kneel beside them, whisper in their ear.Īnd we are too late. Under them remainsĪnd a landscape in which you know you are mortal. Our pain did they are, they have always been Whose light happened thousands of years before On the other hand, history records faithfully what happened in the past and makes us as a society recogonise the importance of the past. Thereby, distancing it from the truth history. The distinction Boland makes, between myth and history seems to amount to this: Myth falsifies the past by exaggerating it, almost romantising it.

Without going into an extreme deep analysis of the poem, here is a brief synopsis, however definitely read the poem in full, which is linked below.

Outside history by eavan boland