Contents
I. Writing as a Woman
Writing as a Woman
Some Observations on Women and Tradition: A Letter to Sharon Bryan
The Biographer as Fiction Maker: Writing on Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath's Word Games
The Iceberg and the Ship: On Elizabeth Bishop
II. Irish Issues: Eavan Boland, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Seamus Heaney
Inside and Outside History
Outside Histrionics: Answering Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill
The Peace within Understanding: Looking at Seamus Heaney's Preoccupations
Stations: Seamus Heaney and the Sacred Sense of the Sensitive Self
III. Other Essays, Reviews, and an Interview
The Trouble with a Word like Formalism
Poetry and Place
A Chev'ril Glove
On Louis MacNiece's "House on a Cliff"
The Uses of Prytherch: The Early Poetry of R. S. Thomas
The Poetry of Dana Gioia: Review of The Gods of Winter
"The Way You Say the World Is What You Get"
An Interview with Richard Poole