The Black Lace Fan my Mother Gave me

The Black Lace Fan my Mother Gave me

Commentary on “The Black Lace Fan my Mother Gave me” by Eavan Bolland

The Black Lace Fan my Mother Gave me by Eavan Bolland reflects on the

last of a love life of a couple during pre-war Paris using a symbol, a

‘Black Lace Fan’. Bolland achieves this through the use of weather

imagery, the changing of his tense from past to present, and using

literary features such as simile, metaphor, personification and

repetition.

In the first stanza of the poem, Bolland disconcerts the reader by

using the diction “it” twice, though representing different things.

The first ‘it’ represents the lace and the second ‘it’ is used to

substitute the climate of the setting. “It was stifling. /A starless

drought made the nights stormy.” This quotation starts building up the

tension in the reader’s mind because of the suffocated feeling the

poet creates by mentioning the word “stifling” in a short sentence

that creates a frustrated tone. The metaphor describing the stormy

night also produces a sense of insecurity through the weather imagery

by expressing anxiety through contradicting dictions like “drought”

and “stormy”.

The first two lines of the second stanza have a repetition of the word

“they” as the first word of each line. This repetition is used to

create a rhythm and to describe the routine of the man and woman

meeting in cafes and the woman always being early. “They met in cafes.

She was always early. / He was late. That evening he was later. / They

wrapped the fan. He looked at his watch.” The syntax of this quotation

produces a tone that is frantic because the sentences are short and

the reader tends to read that part of the poem fast, and with a jerk

at the middle of each...

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that the man was lost and was unheard of, though what happens to the

man next is left to the reader’s imagination.

The last stanza completely changes subject and describes the actions

of a blackbird in a summer morning. The weather once again is a factor

in this poem and the climatic conditions are described using the

diction “sultry” and “heat”. The last sentence, “Suddenly she puts out

her wing – the whole flirtatious span of it” is a personification that

is used to express the symbolism of the black lace fan.

Finally, this poem reflects upon the story of a loving couple and the

significance of the black lace, in the woman’s life, who loses her

man. The poem is expressed by the use of weather imagery, the changing

of tenses from past to present, and also the use of literary features

such as metaphors, simile, personification and repetition.