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Heaney's commitment to the independence of his art, to the pursuit of shape and richness and abundant ambiguity, is also a profound commitment to the quality of public life . . . In a dark time, Heaney . . . has turned borders and dividing lines into rich frontiers.

—Fintan O'Toole, The New York Review of Books

Throughout his career, Seamus Heaney has been concerned with the kind of poetry that is, as he writes, "true to the impact of external reality and... sensitive to the inner laws of the poet's being." Opened Ground, a selection of Heaney's poetry from 1966-1996, includes his first book, Death of a Naturalist, and concludes with The Spirit Level, a collection published just after he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Heaney's voice is like no other – "by turns mythological and journalistic, rural and sophisticated, reminiscent and impatient, stern and yielding, curt and expansive" (Helen Vendler, The New Yorker) – and this is a one-volume testament to the musicality and precision of that voice. The book closes with Heaney's Nobel Lecture: "Crediting Poetry."