Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, author of nine collections of poetry and three volumes of influential essays, is regarded by many as the greatest Irish poet since Yeats. Passage to the Center is the most comprehensive critical treatment to date on Heaney's poetry and the first to study Heaney's entire body of work (including his recent volumes, Seeing Things and The Spirit Level). It is also the first to examine the poems from the perspective of religion, one of Heaney's guiding preoccupations. According to Tobin, the growth of Heaney's poetry may be charted through the recurrent figure of "the center," a key image in the relationship that evolved over time between the poet and his inherited place, an evolution that involved the continual re-evaluation and re-vision of imaginative boundaries. In a way that previous studies have not, Tobin's work examines Heaney's poetry in the context of modernist and postmodernist concerns about the desacralizing of civilization and provides a challenging engagement with the work of a living master.

Daniel Tobin, associate professor of English at Carthage College, is author of the book of poetry, Where the World is Made, winner of the Bakeless Prize.

"The readings are clear, complete, thorough, and give insight on both the poetry and Heaney's use of poetics."-Robert F. Garratt

"So refreshingly original and so much needed. . . . Tobin opens new ground as he strikes inwards and downwards, unearthing interpretive treasures and, best of all, new kinds of questions."-South Atlantic Review

"A thorough analysis of Heaney's oeuvre to date, one that avoids the limitations of formalism and sectarian ideology."-Irish Studies Review

"Tobin's very detailed and admirably interconnected commentary on the poems themselves is impressive."-World Literature Today

"A valuable contribution to modern Irish literary scholarship. . . . Invigorating and commendable."-Modern Language Review