Eavan Boland's poetry collection is sure to whet the appetites of her many fans on this side of the Atlantic. In "Marriage," the first section of "Against Love Poetry," the Dublin native explores the passion, memory and heartbreak of men and women who've spent lives together.

"Where are the lives we lived / when we were young? / Our kisses, the heat of our skin, our bitter words? / The first waking to the first child's cry?" Boland writes in the typically wistful, longing "Then."

Diverse pleasures abound in other poems about immigration, nature or even the life of "Hester Bateman, 18th Century English Silversmith (Who) Takes an Irish Commission," to use the title of Boland's first poem. (

$21 / 53 pages /

Norton)