Geographically [Heaney's] landscape [in Wintering Out] is still the Irish countryside, past or present….

Sometimes the countryside is seen, dramatically, through the eyes of others, not very human others and one of them an outright mermaid, who returns to the sea wrapped in the smoke-reeks, straw-musts and films of mildew from the thatch of her lover's house…. As to metaphorical landscapes, there is little in this book, apart from the prefatory poem, which deals specifically with the present troubles, but of course 'specifically' is the operative word, and even if it were not, what Heaney chooses to tell us is his own business.

The tenacity with which Heaney, superficially the most urbane and least urban of modern poets, clings to his chosen rural setting is certainly not at this stage due to any limitation of actual experience. It comes perhaps from the spirit which makes compilers of anthologies...