"Regan shows Heaney’s early use of the form as a smash and grab on the English tradition, quoting his desire to use the “official English verse form” to write his memorial for 1798, “Requiem for the Croppies”; Portnoyesque, he wanted to stick the sonnet back up its English background. Just as it is fascinating to remember how Heaney weaponises a poetic form here, it also helps us to view his later use of the form from The Haw Lantern onwards as moving towards an effective decommissioning, settling into the extraordinary proto-pax poetry of Seeing Things and The Spirit Level. In the broader context of the chapter here in the Irish sonnet, this sets up an apt comparison with the heroically inventive and unprecedented Alexandrines of Ciaran Carson in The Twelfth of Never which met the post-ceasefire reality with a torrent of passionate play, vividly contrasting with the sneaky intrigues of Muldoon’s sonnets from the middle of the conflict." Michael Hinds DRB

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