Relevant Background | Summary | Themes | Style

This Moment - Eavan Boland [1944]

Relevant Background

• Eavan Boland was born in Dublin in 1944 and lived in Ireland until she was six years old. Her father worked as a diplomat, which meant working in embassies in various countries. Her mother was an artist.
• At the age of six, she and her family moved to London, where she felt people disliked her for being Irish. This deepened her sense of Irishness.
• She later returned to Dublin to attend school and graduated from Trinity College in 1966.
• She worked as a teacher briefly and since 1967 has been a full-time writer and mother.
• Boland married a writer in 1969 and has two children. Her experiences as a wife and mother have influenced what she writes about.
• She has found beauty and importance in the common daily experience of family life in a small house. This experience has influenced her poetry.
• In her adult life Eavan Boland settled in the Dublin suburb of Dundrum. The poem ‘This Moment’ celebrates twilight in a neighbourhood.
• It is the moment when the children stop their play in the street and go indoors for supper and to prepare for bed.
• It is the moment children exit the neighbourhood and re-enter their home.
• It is the moment a child changes back from being a street kid to being a son or daughter of a mother.

Summary

• Boland creates a precise setting, simply stated: a neighbourhood at dusk.
• Parents inside the houses are preparing for their children’s bedtime.
• Outside, stars are about to become visible. Moths are about to come out.
• Inside, fruit is about to be peeled for supper.
• The moths and fruit to be peeled [apple?] suggest the time may be August.
• In that sense the apple may be close to ripeness and won’t be peeled yet.
• One of the trees in the avenue or street appears to be black as night falls.
• One of the house windows is a deep yellow, like butter. A light is on.
• The change happens. A child runs in and is met by the mother coming out.
• They both embrace.
• Now the stars rise up in the sky. The moths flap about.
• Apples are sweet in the children’s mouths. Other apples ripen on trees.

Themes

Family Life
The poem portrays how family life is about to take over from the street games that children have been playing. Mothers prepare for the supper and bedtime inside the houses. Mothers embrace their returning children. Warm light is switched on inside as children return to their families.

A Particular Moment In Time
The poem shows a particular time when human behaviour and light changes. It is a very precise moment. The stars are about to come out, and are not yet visible. Then they can be seen rising in the darkening sky. House lights come on. The action of a woman leaning down to catch her child is brief. Soon all the children will be inside. Change occurs at moments such as the one the poet captures in this poem.

Mothers
Mothers remain caringly in the background while children play outside. They prepare for bedtime. They get supper ready. Then they go out to embrace their children and bring them into their homes. Mothers are warm and caring.

Style

• Repetition Stars, moths and apples are repeated to show the change that takes place during a particular moment of the evening.
• Imagery A neighbourhood is described. Stars, moths, apples, butter, a woman, a tree, a child are all briefly mentioned in this poem. None of them is described in any detail. Many images appeal to the sense of sight like stars, others to the sense of taste like apples. The image of butter appeals to both sight and taste.
• Simile The light in a window is compared to the colour of butter.
• Language Very few words are used. Sentences and phrases are short. The language is simple, consisting of short everyday words.
• Contrast The hidden life of the homes is contrasted to the neighbourhood. There is a contrast between the first and second half of the poem to show change: ‘Stars’ becomes ‘Stars rise’. The yellow window contrasts to the black tree.
• Tone The observer, who uses a minimum of words to paint the neighbourhood at dusk, uses a detached tone: the opening four words are brief and detached. Some of the images like butter and apples are warm. The image of the mother leaning towards her child is stated in a warm tone.
• Atmosphere The mood is warm and tender.
• Assonance • Assonance ‘A’ is the most repeated vowel sound throughout the poem. Two of the opening four words begin with ‘a’. Notice the three strong repeating ‘a’ sounds in ‘stars’, ‘apples’ and ‘dark’ in the last three lines [nine words].
• Sibilance [repetition of ‘s’ sound] These five ‘s’ sounds create a gentle feeling: ‘Stars and moths. And rinds slanting around fruit’.
• Form The poem is a short lyric that relies on images more than music to create its effects.