Heaney's first poetry collection was the prizewinning Death of a Naturalist (1966). In this book and Door into the Dark (1969), he wrote in a traditional style about a passing way of life--that of domestic rural life in Northern Ireland. In Wintering Out (1972) and North (1975), he began to encompass such subjects as the violence in Northern Ireland and contemporary Irish experience, though he continued to view his subjects through a mythic and mystical filter. Among the later …showed first 75 words of 844 total…

…showed last 75 words of 844 total…to escaoe the political trammelsof the past, ...angry that my trust could not repose in the clear light, like poetry or freedom leaning in from sea. I ate the day deliberately, that its tang might quicken me all into verb, pure verb. (“Oysters”, 1979) Significantly, his longing still takes the form of a wish to escape compromised things (nouns): recrudescent henkering after the primitive “true belief” that is itself one of the curses of our time.