[In the following excerpt, Galler explores the expository nature of Heaney's poems in Death of a Naturalist.]

Description—the details of what is being observed or performed—is the basis of all writing: epic, narrative, dramatic, or lyric. And this is the case whether the mind works through the eye directly or behind the eye by the various methods of analogy. But prior to this century poetry was not made of the kind of description that permits the reader no leap whatever to a plane of experience related to but more complete than that which is being observed. What has happened in this century increasingly, and in America especially, is the trend toward description replete with exposition, but lacking complication….

Death of a Naturalist, Seamus Heaney's interesting first book, is made up of description whichremains exposition, with one or two exceptions (notably 'For the Commander of the 'Eliza'"). Heaney, a young Irishman, has been absurdly compared to Edwin Muir by his publisher and presumably by some reviewers. Both poets grew up on farms, and there the similarity ends. Heaney's characteristic poems describe specific events with which he appears to be more familiar than many of us—as in "Churning Day":

This poet leaves no doubt as to what he's seeing—and all the doubt in the world as to what he's perceiving. The number of adjectives is daunting; they are huddled close by their nouns, for mutual safety. Then, there are those phrases with mysterious implications: bombs, hot brewery of gland, churning day, busy scrubber, seasoned wood, purified, flagged kitchen floor. But this poem, like most in the book, comes to nothing—or, to put it more fairly, it comes to an accumulation of details. Heaney's work is dense with exposition; if the level of simple metaphor is ever reached, it is all but obscured by a windmill of details. This is a pity, because even the passage quoted shows Heaney to be more than adroit with sounds and rhythms.

Another kind of poem appears in this book, similar to the kind above in trying to make terribly sure that the reader sees exactly what the poet sees, but a little more enterprising because it employs dramatic action. Such a poem is "An Advancement of Learning." Here (the subject is the poet's fear of rats), the language is less clogged with detail; the emphasis is on a walk (movement allowing of less detail, probably) over a bridge, the sighting of a rat emerging from water, the poet's fascination (adjectives and nouns are prominent), and the resolution as follows:

This terror, cold, wet-furred, small-clawed,
Retreated up a pipe for sewage.
I stared a minute after him.
Then I walked on and crossed the bridge.

That is the poem's close; that, presumably, the advancement of learning. Complication, if it can be called that, exists as a rather common reaction and action. It is possible, of course, that Mr. Heaney is overawed—or I am underawed—by certain things as they are. There are two poems in the book which interest me more: "For the Commander of the 'Eliza,'" mentioned earlier, and "The Play Way." The first—because it takes off from a reported incident, is cast in the dramatic form of a soliloquy by a speaker other than Mr. Heaney, and has as its theme his most established concern, the cruelty of man toward man—indicates a direction in which this poet might operate more to his profit. It is a direction in which some complication of detail is virtually forced upon him. "The Play Way" suggests another facet of Heaney's sensibility which might prove fruitful in the making of poems: a didactic vein played off ironically against the amassed detail. In this connection, Heaney approaches the method of Philip Larkin, the poet by whose example, more than any other's at this point, he might benefit.