An Analysis Of Heaney's 'Blackberry Picking'

From the beginning of the poem, the speaker tells of his naïve, consuming world of blackberries. Because the

Both poets, Frost and Heaney wrote in the pastoral tradition, drawing on the natural landscape of Bellaghy, Co Derry and Frost and the farmland of New England, Massachusetts. Respectively Frost is an influence on Heaney evident in the ‘sound of sense’ and Heaney borrowed the Frostian voice of rural vernacular with his use of unadorned language and natural speech rhythms, giving both poets work a conversational intimacy. Likewise, both poets used the everyday quotidian to illuminate universal truths and to extrapolate deeper meanings from ordinary. Similarly they used interactions with the natural world to produce profound revelations about the past, mortality, human loss, childhood, the creative process, journeys and self-discovery.

Two of the poems written by Seamus Heaney, “Digging” and “Blackberry Picking”, contain recurring themes while both discussing entirely different scenes. The first poem, “Digging”, talks about Heaney’s memories of hearing his father digging in the potato garden outside the house. The second poem, “Blackberry-Picking”, carries a similar solemn tone, while describing another memory of Heaney’s of his experience with picking blackberries. These poems by Heaney share similar themes of reflection of his past experiences in which he dissects important life lessons from everyday events such as the passage of time and the uncertainty of life.

fair”, you can tell this is the voice of a child. There is also a

Written in 1980, Galway Kinnell's Blackberry Eating is a poem which creates a strong metaphoric relationship between the tangible objects of blackberries, and the intangible objects of words. The speaker of the poem feels a strong attraction to the sensory characteristics (the touch, taste, and look) of blackberries. The attraction he feels at the beginning of the poem exclusively for blackberries is paralleled in the end by his appetite and attraction to words. The rush the speaker gets out of blackberry eating is paralleled to the enjoyment he finds in thinking about certain words; words which call up the same sensory images the blackberries embody.

The poem "Blackberries" by Yusef Komunyakaa, tells the story of a carefree young boy who enjoys spending his past time picking blackberries in the forest, until he is confronted with the reality of his obvious lack. Yusef Komunyakaa effectively uses symbolism and figurative language to demonstrate man's conflict with society and himself.

In Seamus Heaney’s poem, “Blackberry-Picking”, the author utilizes diction, alliteration, and rhyme in order to express his discontent in how greedy people can become when they desire something. Heaney wishes to present this idea to his reader through very aggressive diction. The poet juxtaposed the “summer’s blood” (7) in his poem with the juice, or “blood” of blackberries, admiring the fruit for its addicting taste which reawakens his temptation every summer. Had Heaney chosen weaker diction in this metaphor, the individual reading this poem would not feel such powerful emotions towards Heaney’s message about nature’s fragility when injured by human greed. Also, Heaney associates “blood” with the juice of the berries since humans need blood to live, but there are times when

For many, it’s difficult to stop greed once the first promise of satisfaction is made. Blackberry Picking follows the journey of pickers who, upon finding the first sweet fruit, become enraptured in their greed even as signs point to the inevitable rotting of all they’ve found. Through Blackberry Picking, Seamus Heaney criticizes humankind’s tendency to become overwhelmed with desire even though it always results in disappointment.

As the speaker casually calls their parents, a setting of calm expectations is established. While greeting the speaker, the mother’s decision to “run out and get” (1) the father highlights the lack of urgency that is present. The mother is calm and fetches the father in an expected and relaxed fashion, further establishing the calm expectations of the ongoing call. The mother additionally states that “the weather here’s so good” (2). Heaney’s use of the word “good” reflects the setting of the mother and father’s home; the atmosphere of where they live is pleasant and unperturbed. The “weather” serves as a projection of the father’s own state, implying that the father is in good health and that death is not yet looming over him. The last spoken words in the poem reveal that the father was conducting “a bit of weeding” (3). The word “weeding” highlights the capability of the

At first glance this poem seems a happy tale of childhood. These are memories that make the heart smile. Images of heavy summer storms full of rain, alternating with bright, joyous sunshine, full bushels of blackberries waiting to be picked; these are images most can relate with. The reader can taste the bitter-sweetness of the summer’s first blackberry, feel the scratch of briars against their own skin, sense the excitement and butterflies in their own stomachs as they race to gather all the wondrous blackberries they can, followed by the anger and the disappointment when the blackberries rot and ferment before the readers’ eyes. However, if the reader were to take the diction and imagery quite literally, a somewhat different picture is aroused. “…a glossy purple clot…” (line 3) describing the first ripened blackberry, brings to mind the picture of a nasty blood clot in someone’s veins, why would Heaney compare blackberries to blood clots?

is the idea of the bone as stone, with the mind as a catapult. This

By analysing the structure (shift from external to internal landscape), language (tenses, pronoun), and presentation of the experience of seeing the daffodils, I seek to demonstrate that feelings of the sublime are only evoked when the narrator’s imagination participates in the scene he has internalized in his memory. While the first three stanzas exemplify a merely physical stimulus and response mechanism to nature, the last stanza shows how active poetic imagination enables man to recreate and amplify emotions encountered, thus resulting in feelings of the sublime. Why does the observer not recognise the ‘wealth’ the scene brings in that moment? How does poetic imagination connect the physical eye and the inner eye to allow for sublime, transcendental experience? Hess argues that the poem “depend[s] for [its] power on the narrator’s ability to fix a single, discrete, visually defined moment of experience in his mind, to which he can later return in acts of private memory and imagination” (298). An example of the recapturing of emotions is seen where “gay” (I. 15) is recaptured as “pleasure” (I. 23) at the end. Active imagination, which draws inspiration from memory of the initial encounter, is now a permanent possession that

In the most literal sense, the speaker of Heaney’s poem, is a young boy engaging in his annual summer activity of picking blackberries. At first the speaker appears to be anticipatory of the “late August… sun… [when] the blackberries would ripen” (Heeney 2). However, upon further examination, as the poem steadily progresses it quickly becomes evident that “there's [a] rub” (Shakespeare, 3.1.65). This “rub” is most prominently exposed through Heaney’s contrasting images of divinity, with the first stanza alluding to Christ, communion, and the crucifixion, to the Biblically defined sins of gluttony, lust, and greed peppered throughout the first stanza and dominating the second. The first instance of an allusion is to that of a higher power when the speaker observes that, “...given heavy rain and sun/For a full week the blackberries would ripen.” (Heaney 1-2). This absence of a direct means to an end, such as a farmer watering the blackberries, alludes to the presence, and in turn, influence of a higher power, in that the blackberries do not ripen themselves, only through natural means of “...heavy rain and sun..." (1-2). This reference to natural means of germination insinuates the conception of Jesus through Mary without the aid of a human father, or in the case of

The reverence with which he speaks of these opportunities, give the reader the sense that the speaker is now looking back on his life and suddenly realizes the importance of this lost fruit.

Alliteration is used quite often in the poem. Throughout the whole poem, there is a frequent repetition of “b” words, such as “big dark blobs burned”. In the readers mind, this creates a more powerful image of the berries, and gives a strong impression of their shape