Blackberry Picking

The speaker’s attitude here of gratification is further demonstrated through imagery. Once again, the imagery, like the diction, is sensory. In the sentence, “I gave him persimmons, swelled, heavy as sadness, and sweet as love,” the reader can imagine, by the use of a simile, exactly what the speaker is trying to make us see. Other images that can be easily captured are the last lines, “the texture of persimmons, in your palm, the ripe weight.” The speaker also provides the reader with the color of the persimmon by comparing it to the sun. When he says, “my mother said every persimmon has a sun inside, something golden, glowing warm as my face,” he is trying to help us visualize exactly what this specific fruit looks and feels like. All of the information the speaker provides further proves his complete understanding of his past misconceptions, which thus show his attitude of contentment through recognition.

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

The author also uses similes to compare two or more things. One example is “The first sprinkles passed over like army scouts”. (In lines 48-49) This explains that its giving an explanation what they are thinking it is. This simile

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.

The author uses a pair of similes to help people have a picture in their head about the story. In the story he says ¨It was empty as a jungle glade at a hot high noon¨. This simple quote makes the story a whole lot more realistic. You can practically feel the hot sun pouring down on your back. It helps people form an illustration in their head about what is happening in the story. Another simile used is ¨The house lights followed her like a flock of fireflies.¨ This quote

One of the most pervasive themes in this passage is that of a spreading decay that is taking over the society. This is first expressed in quite a literal sense, as an actual decay of fruit and produce, which spreads like a virus across the American countryside and farming lands. Due to the economic mismanagement of the farming industry, fruit and other produce are left to rot and decay on the trees because they are not picked by the farmers. The text gives many examples of different fruits being left to decay on the farms. We see, for example, the cherries, that are described at first as “full and sweet”, being left to turn into seeds which “drop and dry with black shreds hanging from them”. The purple prunes, which now “carpet the

describing the characters and objects throughout the poem and in creating the atmosphere of the

Then, in the seventh stanza the narrator talks about when she finds the orange she has a “vision” of its “exotic land”(29-30). She goes on describe “the sun/ you swelled under/ the tree you grew from” (30-32). Using visual imagery, this setting sounds almost perfect. Kelly uses this imagery to suggest that because if the orange is perfect, it must have come from perfect beginnings. If the orange is her lover then, she is saying that because he is such a perfect person he must have had a wonder life leading up to this point. Another piece of imagery is when the narrator “[climbs]/ the hill, [looks] down/ on the town [they] live in/ with sunlight on [her] face” (41-44). This visual imagery is used to set a romantic scene in which the narrator is finally happy, and at peace that she has found the perfect orange. When the narrator looks down on her town it’s her looking back and reflecting on her life before she met her true love. The sun light on her face is the bright future she and her lover are going to have together. In the last stanza Kelly uses visual imagery to end the poem with the narrator “[walking] away/ [leaving] behind a trail/ of lamp-bright rind” (49-51). The visual imagery of her walking away leaving behind the rinds of the oranges is the way Kelly ends this poem. The narrator and her lover are walking away from their past lives and starting a new one

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

The third line states the speaker's purpose. He is going out "to eat the blackberries for breakfast." This line shows that the speaker not only has an attraction to the berries aesthetic qualities but also craves them to satiate his appetite. The speaker's appetite for the berries is later paralleled to his appetite for words. In the next line, the speaker describes the stalks of the blackberry bushes as "very prickly." This is the first negative image used in association with the blackberries. All the previous images have been positive characteristics of blackberries- fat, overripe, icy, and black. Perhaps, this negative image of the prickly stalks is being used to show that along with pleasure invariably comes pain in the natural world. This same idea used in the context of the words suggests the two-fold potential of words to both benefit and harm. In the next line, the prickly stalks are attributed as a penalty that "they [blackberry bushes] earn for knowing the black art." This imagery of the flowering of the bushes being a black art lends a magical, bewitching quality to the blackberries, an idea that there is something wickedly tempting about the berries. In connecting this idea to the "word" metaphor, it shows that the ability to tempt and persuade with words can also be a form of black art. In the next line, the speaker talks about standing among the blackberries and lifting the stalks to his mouth where "the

Another simile the author uses is, ?As wet as the children whose mothers are going to give them away,? (line #6,7,8) to simulate a sweaty love making scene. This scene being described should give the reader clear images in thought which allows one to understand how Olds views these acts. The simile ?light rising slowly as steam off their joined skin,? (line #11,12,13) can also be used to perceive the same image of a hot, sweaty, and passionate love making scene. The confusion displayed by the author creates repeated questions concerning how two people who are not in love can execute such a

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.

He could have chosen any other object to write about, but he chose blackberries because it has a deep meaning that makes the reader truly think about what he or she is reading. After the reader is able to understand his true intentions behind the poem, they are able to genuinely reflect. When he says, “Although I could smell old lime-covered history, at ten I’d still hold out my hands & berries fell into them. Eating from one and filling a half gallon with the other, I ate the mythology & dreamt of pies & cobbler, almost.”, he is saying that as a child he had a rough time. Again the deeper meaning of blackberries is extremely prevalent because the darkness that is described by blackberries is shown when he imagines eating pie and cobbler because he was not permitted to consume delectable goods.In the middle of the poem, the author writes, “The mud frogs in rich blackness, hid from daylight.” to describe the life he lived. He being the black mud frog, hides during the day. During slave times he could not show his real self being because he would be prosecuted by the owners for not doing his job. Just like the frog, he makes his true appearance at night time. Slaves were given strict rules to follow and if they were not abided by they had a chance of being

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?

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