Narration in In a Time of Violence by Eavan Boland In her 1994 poetry collection, In a Time of Violence, Eavan Boland presents her readers with a very focused set of control ideas. These ideas, centered on the concepts of family, history, legends and storytelling, blend fluidly and build upon each other as the work progresses until one concept, above all others, becomes clear: that telling and retelling stories and legends is not only a great power, but a great responsibility. In this collection of poems, the poet consciously accepts this responsibility as a storyteller, thus appropriating the power to strengthen family bonds, question conventional stories and create new legends for the women of the future. controlling ideas of In a Time of Violence is a short poem entitled Legends. This poem is mainly about the relationship between stories and legends and family ties between women; in this case, the bond between a mother and her child. The poem actually begins by telling the story of the narrative: “…they [the narrators] begin the world anew, / making the mountain ridges blue / and the rivers clear and the hero fearless…” (Boland, 50). It is clear that Boland is assigning large amounts of power to narrators in the context of the speaker-listener relationship; in the eyes of the listener, they have the divine power to "begin the world again" and to remake and purify elements of the story world as they see fit. The third stanza of the poem further examines this power and creates a common bond between all story tellers: “and the outcome is always indecisive / so the next teller can say to begin… in the middle of the paper… to continue, no matter how difficult it is. At the heart of In a Time of Violence is the need and responsibility to reimagine and tell old stories that no longer work; bring women together by eliminating the repressive female images – the beautiful heroine, the invisible seamstress – that saturate the current and past stories of our culture. By creating and telling these stories, Boland explores what she called "the meeting place of femininity and history" and creates a common discourse among all women who wish to hear it. Works cited and consulted Boland, Eavan. In a time of violence. New York: Norton, 1994. Weekes, Ann Owens. “‘An Origin Like Water’: The Poetry of Eavan Boland and Modernist Criticisms of Irish Literature,” Irishness and (Post) Modernism, ed. John S. Rickard. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1994.