Spirit Level

"What more shall we say of Heaney? We have already given him nearly every prize there is, our white-haired boy, our national treasure. The trouble is, he gets better, and this is indeed a trouble because continued praise, without some salt in it, loses savour....More and more, Heaney works like a camera commanded by an imaginative film-director, using asterisks between sections of a poem that act like film cuts, or fades....Heaney is the real thing, both as poet and as countryman (he knows you can gauge a beast's health by the smell of its urine). He sings creation, like his Caedmon, and as simply, giving shine and force to a last phrase we would have considered tired--until he uses it."Heaney, Seamus is the author of 'Spirit Level', published 1997 under ISBN 9780374525118 and ISBN 0374525110.