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Prior to reading this anthology, I had only really read Heaney's cutting and beautiful translation of Beowulf. I hadn't forgotten about him after high school, I just hadn't time.

Heaney's poetry is palpable. My goodness! You want to read these out loud and feel the weight of the meter and savor every syllable. You want to taste and see.

His particular musicality and voice is so distinctly born of Ireland. Even when he's not writing directly about the landscape or using it as a device, it's there: the peat, the sod, the damp ache, the sea. Every iamb is itself a sod-cutter: slicing into the layers, bringing up the muck underneath from the psyche. He finds new ways to sing: the poems are never overwrought, they never get old, they are never camp or cheap aesthetic tricks that parody Ireland.

Environmental and place- based writers: take note.

I'm so grateful to Heaney for sharing his craft with the world. His work is a thing of real beauty.