SOURCE: Mangan, Gerald. “Like Peat-Smoke Mulling.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5118 (4 May 2001): 24.

In the following review, Mangan praises Heaney's impeccable pairing of words to things and his ability to elevate poetry to the level of myth or religion in Electric Light.

Seamus Heaney has mapped out his own territory so clearly and thoroughly, over the past thirty-odd years, that we are liable to fall into the comforting illusion of knowing him from every angle, as if he were already a sort of walking monument. He paces the same ground habitually, with all the sharp-eyed fondness of a crofter inspecting a fertile inheritance; and he is constantly enriched by the mineral resources he finds under his feet. But he has never ceased to expand, and his very rootedness allows him to absorb the most far-fetched influences without fear of changing shape. Although bounded in a nutshell and a prey to...