''Seamus Heaney has gone beyond the themes of his earlier poetry and has made the giant step towards the most ambitious, most intractable themes of maturity. The power of this book comes from a sense that he is reaching out towards a type of desolation and of isolation without which no imagination can be seen to have grown up.'' Eavan Boland, Irish Times

''Keyed and pitched unlike any other significant poet at work in the language anywhere.'' Harold Bloom, Times Literary Supplement