None of these poems really struck me the first time through, but after a little more examination, there are two in particular to which I kept coming back.
"The Locket" is a very peculiar poem to me because it kind of goes against what I was expecting to find in this category of "emigrant" poems--I was expecting to hear something along the lines of a James Joyce/Bono "let's find somewhere else besides Ireland to dazzle us" kind of attitude, but in this poem, John Montague seems to express a deep respect and love for his mother, despite the fact that she did not give him the love that a good mother would give. (I assume that his mother is a native of Ireland, thus associating his respect for his mother with a respect for his Irish heritage, and I gather that he was born in Brooklyn from the poem.)
What's particularly interesting/potentially on the verge of disturbing is the way he seems to romanticize/eroticize his mother with lines about how he came back to court her and about "teasingly untying [her] apron." It's almost as if, because Montague didn't receive motherly love, he doesn't know the way a relationship between one and one's mother should be, and so he tries the best he can to express his love to her.
It's possible that the lines with romantic/erotic connotations are supposed to be symbols of something, but I don't really understand why he would choose to use those kinds of symbols.
The other poem that resonated more with me as I reread it was "Fond Memory." What I gather from the poem is that Boland is speaking of a certain sense he gathered during his childhood (I presume in Ireland?) that, although there has been a great deal of suffering and striving in the past to work out the kinks of human civilization, everything is pretty much smooth-running now, we've pretty much got it figured out. Thus the children cried for the death of the British King, because the king is a part of a system that is good now, when, actually, as Boland finds out later at the end of the poem, he was wrong, there's a lot of conflict that is still ongoing.
This, at least, was how I perceived the poem, because I feel like this was my attitude for a great deal of my childhood, learning about people like Martin Luther King Jr. and thinking that after all of the amazing things done through the movement he led and inspired that racism was like ancient history, only to grow up and realize that race issues are still all over the place.
I could be completely off on a lot of the stuff I said and assumed...so don't hold me to any of it..ha ha!
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I thought the erotic connotations were interesting too. He has not had much time with his mother to develop a strong relationship, but it is interesting that he drew on the image of pulling at her apron because that is one way that little children express their need for attention. What makes that line sound strange is that it is said by a grown man, instead of a child. Perhaps he uses that image because being with his mother brings him back to a juvenile state, especially since he has so many unanswered questions like why she did not want him.
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