"Electric Light" travels widely through time and space, visiting the monuments of the classical world and reminiscing about the poet's childhood. The electrification of the countryside and the light of ancient afternoons merge within the trajectory of a life. It is a book that explores origins and prophecies: the places where things begin, the ground of understanding, whether it is Arcadia or Anore, the sanctuary of Epidaurus or the Ban Valley in County Derry. "Electric Light" ranges from brief notes ("owls") to dialogue poems, whose skillful distribution grants freedom to the "necessity and flow of conversation"; other poems are organized into sections, their distinct cargoes docked side by side, revealing a hidden and therapeutic connection. The pre-Socratic wisdom that everything flows is balanced with the constants of memory: poems that elegize friends and fellow poets, naming the "true names" of their contemporaries behind the Shakespearean roles they played in school. These gifts of remembrance renew the poet's mission to render to things their rightful names. The resulting poems are full of subtle syntactic tonalities, where Heaney can be heard extending his vocabulary and reference in this eleventh collection of his.