Dear Eavan Boland, I Wanted to Send You a Letter | Literary Hub

When I learned of your death, after a hard morning of feeling stuck in my writing and irritated by the walls and humans around me, I pushed my chair back and ran into my bedroom to sob-in a place clear from children's questions and sticky jam jars and school lessons, but still littered with laundry and books and dust. The detritus of domestic life. A space that you knew, and made beautiful and sacred through your work. A large part of the cutting sadness of your death is that now, in global quarantine, your clear, quiet poems of interior space, candles and knives, women's voices, and kitchen gardens have even more meaning and heft. We need the tender attentiveness of your words.