Ao apresentar criticamente ao público de língua portuguesa a obra da escritora irlandesa contemporânea Eavan Boland, por meio de uma seleção poética traduzida, que privilegia a visualidade e a ekphrase, este trabalho tece uma leitura intermediática (artes visuais e literárias) e verifica os efeitos de sentido da intermedialidade na construção do lirismo poético. Pressupondose a inevitável incomunicabilidade da linguagem, esta tese examina a intermedialidade, presente no processo de escrita entre as fronteiras do nacional e do cosmopolita e, sobretudo, do privado ao público e deste àquele, enquanto um recurso artístico, característico da pluralidade identitária da poesia, capaz de alcançar graus de comunicabilidade mais amplos, ou seja, menos deficitários. Por fim, a seleção de poemas aqui recolhidos traça o percurso íntimo da produção artística de Eavan Boland, momento em que os graus de articulação lingüística (seja por meio visual, verbal ou intermediático) assistem a uma suspensão de sua incomunicabilidade, e conseguem atingir esferas mais densas de sucesso comunicativo, fazendo vir à tona a natureza lírica da escrita: os movimentos concomitantes entre as esferas pública e privada referem-se à busca da interioridade, da subjetividade do eu-lírico, o auto-retrato da poetisa. Portanto, a partir do exercício interpretativo das traduções poéticas, bem como do estudo da intermedialidade, lê-se aqui a ekphrase como recurso poético na obra de Eavan Boland, capaz de metonimizar o transitar da voz poética na tradição irlandesa a partir de onde a poetisa fala, a nação irlandesa e a ruptura com essa tradição, a busca ao encontro do feminino, da voz da mulher e, acima de tudo, da voz poética enunciadora do fluxo comunicativo. / While presenting the work of the Irish, contemporary writer Eavan Boland to the public of Portuguese readers, by means of a poetic selection that privileges visuality and ekphrasis, this thesis establishes an intermediatic reading (visual and literary arts) and verifies intermediality´s effects of meaning in the construction of poetic lyricism. While presupposing language´s inevitable incommunicability, this thesis bears witness to the intermediality present in the process of writing in the frontiers of the national and the cosmopolitan and, above all, of the private and public and vice-versa, as an artistic tool, characteristic of poetry´s plural identity, which is capable of reaching broader, less deficient levels of communicability. Ultimately, the selection of poems here presented heeds to the intimate trajectory of Eavan Boland´s artistic production, which reveals levels of linguistic articulation (being them visual, verbal or intermediatic) that suspend its incommunicability and, then, are able to reach deeper spheres of communicative success, as it brings up the lyric nature of writing. The movements that go from the public to the private spheres of subjectivity refer to the search for interiority, for the self, the self-portrait in poetry. Therefore, from the interpretative exercise of the poetic translations, as well as from the study of intermediality, ekphrasis is here read as a poetic tool in the work of Eavan Boland, metonimic of the poetic voice´s transit within the Irish tradition, from where the poet speaks, the Irish nation and the rupture with such tradition, in search of the encounter with the Female, the woman´s voice and, above all, the poetic voice as enunciator of the communicative flow.

Ao apresentar criticamente ao público de língua portuguesa a obra da escritora irlandesa contemporânea Eavan Boland, por meio de uma seleção poética traduzida, que privilegia a visualidade e a ekphrase, este trabalho tece uma leitura intermediática (artes visuais e literárias) e verifica os efeitos de sentido da intermedialidade na construção do lirismo poético. Pressupondose a inevitável incomunicabilidade da linguagem, esta tese examina a intermedialidade, presente no processo de escrita entre as fronteiras do nacional e do cosmopolita e, sobretudo, do privado ao público e deste àquele, enquanto um recurso artístico, característico da pluralidade identitária da poesia, capaz de alcançar graus de comunicabilidade mais amplos, ou seja, menos deficitários. Por fim, a seleção de poemas aqui recolhidos traça o percurso íntimo da produção artística de Eavan Boland, momento em que os graus de articulação lingüística (seja por meio visual, verbal ou intermediático) assistem a uma suspensão de sua incomunicabilidade, e conseguem atingir esferas mais densas de sucesso comunicativo, fazendo vir à tona a natureza lírica da escrita: os movimentos concomitantes entre as esferas pública e privada referem-se à busca da interioridade, da subjetividade do eu-lírico, o auto-retrato da poetisa. Portanto, a partir do exercício interpretativo das traduções poéticas, bem como do estudo da intermedialidade, lê-se aqui a ekphrase como recurso poético na obra de Eavan Boland, capaz de metonimizar o transitar da voz poética na tradição irlandesa a partir de onde a poetisa fala, a nação irlandesa e a ruptura com essa tradição, a busca ao encontro do feminino, da voz da mulher e, acima de tudo, da voz poética enunciadora do fluxo comunicativo. / While presenting the work of the Irish, contemporary writer Eavan Boland to the public of Portuguese readers, by means of a poetic selection that privileges visuality and ekphrasis, this thesis establishes an intermediatic reading (visual and literary arts) and verifies intermediality´s effects of meaning in the construction of poetic lyricism. While presupposing language´s inevitable incommunicability, this thesis bears witness to the intermediality present in the process of writing in the frontiers of the national and the cosmopolitan and, above all, of the private and public and vice-versa, as an artistic tool, characteristic of poetry´s plural identity, which is capable of reaching broader, less deficient levels of communicability. Ultimately, the selection of poems here presented heeds to the intimate trajectory of Eavan Boland´s artistic production, which reveals levels of linguistic articulation (being them visual, verbal or intermediatic) that suspend its incommunicability and, then, are able to reach deeper spheres of communicative success, as it brings up the lyric nature of writing. The movements that go from the public to the private spheres of subjectivity refer to the search for interiority, for the self, the self-portrait in poetry. Therefore, from the interpretative exercise of the poetic translations, as well as from the study of intermediality, ekphrasis is here read as a poetic tool in the work of Eavan Boland, metonimic of the poetic voice´s transit within the Irish tradition, from where the poet speaks, the Irish nation and the rupture with such tradition, in search of the encounter with the Female, the woman´s voice and, above all, the poetic voice as enunciator of the communicative flow.

Robert Frost’s legendary description of “the sound of sense” to define his poetics has for decades sounded like little more than common sense. His idea is now taken to be fairly straightforward: the inflections of an utterance resulting from the tension between demotic speech and poetic form indicate its purport. However, our accepted notion of Frost’s formulation as simply the marriage of form and meaning misconstrues what is potentially revolutionary in it: if everyday speech and verse form generate tension, then Frost has described a method for mediating between reality, represented by speech, and art, represented by verse form. The merger is not passive: the sound of sense occurs when Frost “drag[s] and break[s] the intonation across the metre.” And yet Frost places speech and verse form in a working relationship. It is the argument of this dissertation that poets reckon with what is often understood as discord between poetry and reality by putting into correspondence forms of speech and the forms of poetry. The poets I examine–Seamus Heaney, Gwendolyn Brooks, Tony Harrison, and Lucille Clifton–are concerned with their positions in local communities that range from the family unit to ethnic, religious, racial, economic, and sexual groups, and they marshal forms of speech in poetic form to speak from those locales and to counter the drag and break of those located social and political realities. They utilize what I call their “local languages”–the speech of their particular communities that situates them geographically in local contexts and politically in social constructs–in various ways: they employ them as raw material; they thematize them; they invent idiosyncratic “local” languages to undermine expectations about the communities that speak those languages; they devise generalized languages out of standard and nonstandard constructions to speak not just to and from specific locations but to speak more broadly about human experience. How, these poets ask, can poetry respond to atrocities, deprivations, divisions, and disturbances without becoming programmatic or propagandistic and without reinforcing false preconceptions about the kinds of language suitable for poetry? They answer that question with the living speech of their immediate worlds.