If events in Ireland have been thought malefic in their relations to the art of poetry (as they are to almost everything else) then that may be the reason why Heaney and Derek Mahon have both maintained two distinct styles apiece. One can be used for the racial-cum-archaeological manoeuvres of their imaginations, or simply the lyricism towards which they are drawn by temperament, and another for more direct utterance, for the kind of poem which, in their Irish circumstances, is expected of them.

The formula is too simple, and suggests a similarity between Heaney and Mahon which doesn't exist. Mahon's art is one of elegance, in which the assurance of his skill aspires to suavity, to an ease of writing in which the labour of making will be inconspicuous but impressive. Heaney's poems on the other hand are hewn, as if he wants to give the impression that, like Gaelic poets of old, he composes in the dark with a boulder on his chest. Mahon is also less immersed in the culture and history of Ireland. He appears to be re-enacting the Irish gesture of flight from possible parochialism towards a more sophisticated milieu of Europe complicated by home-looking, by the love-hate affections of the literary exile.

Yet it is these glances towards home, or, rather, intense stares productive of irascibility or melancholy, that, at present, predominate. This happens virtually on account of the over-literariness of many of his other poems. "Hommage to Malcolm Lowry", "After Nerval", or "Epitaph for Flann O'Brien" are examples. No matter the sincerity of these genuflections, Mahon's cleverness, wit, and grace are preferable when working against less literary subjects. "Cavafy", for instance, though literary enough in its origins, is an exhilarating series of poems.

Mahon's image of enchantment is summarised for him in the life of the gipsies. He has written about this in his earlier books. In the new collection [The Snow Party] he imitates a poem by Philippe Jaccottet, "Les Gitanes." A world of bandana and banjo, sing-songs under the stars at places with no disheartening historical associations—it looks like self-indulgence, though Mahon is too alert to allow his writing to create anything so inept.

Mahon's consciousness controls his imagination, as it must, to save the integrity of imagination and prevent it from being the repository of mere longings. (pp. 78-9)

The finest poem in The Snow Party is "A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford." The poem starts with a literary occasion, but Mahon leaps over the possible limitations of that; the poem blazes off the page, and is the consummation of his writing so far, simply one of the finest poems of the decade. There is nothing wrong with it; and the same can be said for "The Banished Gods."

To say of a poem that there's "nothing wrong with it" might sound as grudging as the terms of praise said to be characteristic of the great jazz player, the late Pee Wee Russell—"it doesn't bother me." But I think it's true praise. Neither Mahon nor Hugo Williams, though, is a poet of negative virtues, writing tight little syntactical perfections which protect, lovingly, a single precious image. Mahon's "elegance" is more significant than that; he is not playing for safety but living up to a subjectively formed stylistic ideal within which he can be seen to perform in language without sacrificing what he feels for his concerns. (pp. 80-1)