Although Heaney's reputation was already strong by the time Field Work was published in 1979, the new volume was hailed by most critics as a powerful and impressive departure from his first four volumes of poetry. Says Ian Hamilton, in a 1987 review of Heaney's The Haw Lantern for the London Review of Books: "It was with his fifth book, Field Work, that Heaney found a voice that is neither bleakly antiquarian nor awkwardly portentous." Still, not everybody liked Field Work, or Heaney, for that matter. In his 1979 review for Parnassus, critic Calvin Bedient notes that Heaney's strong reputation "is astonishing in view of his modest ambition and tone." This negative view of Heaney is by far the minority opinion. In fact, as Helen Vendler says in her 2000 book, Seamus Heaney, much of.....
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