Seamus Heaney: Selected Poems, 1966-1987

Seamus Heaney is an Irish treasure in literature. His works display the "concrete reality" that he aimed for in his poetry. My favorite poem is "Digging". He is talented in fusing agric./pol./soc./religion themes together in one poem.

Heaney's "Selected Poems" shows a good picture of the poet's development up to "Station Island" and the sonnets of Glanmore and Clearances. Like Yeats, Heaney had to go through a few volumes before he "became good": except for "The Tolland Man," the poems selected from his first four collections are flat, even the much-anthologized "Digging," which perseveres in anthologies only because it illustrates Heaney's overall philosophy. With the bog poems from "North," Heaney comes into his own, and he has managed to remain at this consistent level of excellence since then.