SOURCE: Taylor, John. Review of Electric Light, by Seamus Heaney. Poetry 179, no. 5 (February 2002): 296-98.

In the following review, Taylor appreciates Heaney's examination of the past in Electric Light, but laments the poet's apparent emotional distance from his subjects.

Although Seamus Heaney includes fine lines celebrating landscape in Electric Light, this is not his most impressive collection. Several bookish poems enfeeble the overall impact of a volume comprising, even more than descriptive nature poetry, some engaging, thought-provoking reminiscence. This irregularity is a pity. The Irish poet's particular way of looking back merits attention. One wishes that he had produced a more unified collection devoted to recovering vanished events from his past.

He notably attempts, as an aging man, to re-experience childhood and early-adulthood perceptions in all their sensate fullness. When (in the opening poem) he looks down at water “pouring over the weir out of Lough Neagh,” he recalls...