ABSTRACT
Like both the Movement poets and the Hughes generation, he is not a modernist. His temper is constructive, not iconoclastic. Even the Poundean urge to go against 'the tyranny of the lamb' was not natural to him, and was not sustained. But no one has thought of Heaney as a modernist. He has been called, with increasing frequency, a postmodernist. The fact is that, uniconoclastic and classically inclined though he is, his poetry breaks new ground in English. The nearest thing to a predecessor, perhaps, is Auden; but Heaney is obviously unlike Auden in important ways. His novelty is partly attributable to the incorporation of Irish subjects and - to a lesser extent - forms into his usage. The leaning towards clarity in style, to aspire to a transparency which will be of public utility, sometimes faces up to the need for a colloquialism in usage which traditionally has been acceptable only in translation.
