Here is a poetry as superficially accessible as Frost's poetry is superficially accessible: one can almost hear the sighs of relief emanating from those readers discouraged by the complexities of modernist and postmodernist poetry. But it is not quite so understandable that most critics—scattered murmurings of dissent aside—would lean in the direction of Robert Lowell's assessment that Heaney is "the most important Irish poet since Yeats," an accolade that the poet himself, who seems to eschew self-advertising, must bear somewhat uneasily. Part of the explanation may be that reviewers and critics themselves have been captivated by the appeal of the subject matter, the Irish because it confirms the native experience and the Americans and British because it is exotic, a part of the charm of Irish culture to the outsider.
The appeal of the poems to critics is perhaps not so surprising if the favorable reception of Ted Hughes's early work, itself based on a brute natural world exotic to the London or New York reviewer or academic critic, is recalled. Heaney himself certainly found elements in Hughes's work that he could adapt to his own uses and that pushed him toward the possession of his own voice.
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