Figurative Language In Blackberry-Picking

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

In order to appreciate a poem properly, care must be taken to analyze and understand many different facets of the work. Poems are often very complex and require a great deal of thought in order to arrive at the intended meaning. At the very least, three particular items of information must be uncovered during the reading of poetry. An experienced reader of poetry will always determine the identity of the speaker, the occasion of the speech, and the central idea of the poem.

Throughout the poem the tone and harmony is showing many different moods including shyness, anger and calmness. An example of shyness is at the start of the poem “softy, silently it swishes”, an example of anger is in the middle of the poem “it thumps, it sprays it rips at shores, its ozone spray”, and finally at the end of the poem calmness is shown, “it spends its strength, it sings, it sighs. The wave recedes”. One aspect of the poem I find intriguing is the alliteration and personification. For example, “it sighs, it sings, it seeks”.

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.

Janie’s dream under the pear tree symbolizes her desire for love. The earliest memory she recalls during her story to Pheoby was spending “every minute that she could steal from her chores under that tree for the last three days” (10). As she lies there, Hurston uses vivid and direct language to portray Janie’s thoughts about sexuality with phrases such as “snowy virginity of the bloom” (10). Not only does she observe the characteristics of the buds, she also finds the action fascinating. “She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the

The berries appear twice in the poem. At the start “she held out her hands bright with berries, the first of the season”. Here they appear as bright and in season or ready to eat. They also appear at the end of the poem as “shrivelled fruit”. This means that the berries would be old and simply not enjoyable to eat. This shows that the family is not in a place long enough to be able to grow a healthy crop. These berries represent the family as they also appear to be happy at the start of the poem as they were settled in their home, loving life however after the father announces that they would be moving, turned into ‘shrivelled fruit’ as they are thought to be sad and unhappy due to their constant movements. This relates to shrivelled fruit as it is not

Though the poem focuses heavily on the speaker’s attempts to satisfy his desire, no greater purpose appears to lie at the end of his quest. The “plate of eyes” that “burned” suggests that the speaker feels like he’s being watched, as if someone is standing and judging him for his thirst. The word “burned” implies that the feeling of being observed left a painful impression on him. The pickers leave the field with “hands peppered with thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s” (16). The choice of a comparison to Bluebeard, the violent murderer from a fairytale, suggests that the speakers links his desire with a violent, destructive act, further illustrating the way lust and desire is tangled up with guilt. Those who desire as the pickers do are haunted and tormented by the fruitlessness of their efforts. Furthermore, the poem is structured such that, for the most part, the ends of the lines do not quite rhyme. The “almost rhymes” throughout the poem mirror the disappoint the speakers feels; lines that come close to rhyming are just short of satisfying to read, similar to how the pickers’ quest does not quite fulfill their desire. By interweaving pain and disappointment with the blackberry picking process, the author suggests that with excess greed and desire comes pain and suffering. The pickers know, at least subconsciously, that their trek through the fields has neither an end goal nor a

The imagery of the bees and the pear tree are the catalyst of Janie’s coming-of-age, representing her first “springtime” and the awakening of her sexuality. The moment Janie sees the bee pollinating the blossoms on the pear tree is when she becomes aware of her sexuality. She finds herself empathizing with the blossoms; both being young and undergoing the springtime of life. Contrastingly, however, Janie has no “bees singing for her” like the blossoms do (Hurston 11). In Janie’s eyes, the relationship between the bee

The poem uses a vast amount of alliteration throughout it. The author is showing a pattern through their writing. He uses alliteration to give life to his words for a better understanding of what is happening.

The musical devices put style and emphasis into the poem and create a more deep description on how much Kinnell love eating blackberries. He uses words like “love”, “splurge”, and “ripest” to describe his affection for the berries.

Imagery in “Blackberry Eating” Memories of late summer. Free from all inhibitions, the ideas of family and plentiful growth are on the mind. As the growing season concludes and the produce ripens, the ease at which they fall from the vine heightens. This scene is depicted in Galway Kinnel’s poem, “Blackberry Eating” and he uses several literary devices to describe this scene and compare the nature of blackberry eating and the nature in which humans speak. Moreover, Kinnel employs the use of imagery in the poem by describing the quality of the blackberries and the manner in which they are eaten.

The first time this theme is revealed in the poem “Blackberry-Picking” is while the author describes the first blackberry ripens. He recalls, “You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet. ”(Source A.) The blackberries in this poem represent ones childhood. He compares to the innocence of being a child to eating blackberries for the first time after they ripen.

Seamus Heaney refers to Bluebeard at the end of stanza one. Bluebeard, according to the footnote, is a character in a fairy tale who murders his wives. Why on earth would

Both Millay and Young show their gratitude for fresh food, but after the chicken is processed and fruit becomes rotten, the diversity of the speakers’ attitude drives two poems into different directions. Millay thinks the change of state of the fruit happens naturally, and people should acknowledge and embrace its decomposition rather than plucking it from the tree at its best moment, and then store it in the cellar. Unlike Millay, Young has a negative approach to the change of food, and his disapproval on the transformation of the food is emphasized by his repeating acclaim of the chicken. In “Never May the Fruit Be Plucked”, Millay intentionally use the passive tense to describe how the fruit got picked, and her choice of verbs such as

Blackberry picking by Seamus Heaney is about time, gluttony, limitations of life, and to some extent, the struggles of life. Heaney writes retrospectively about his life, with hindsight, about how he as a child, would go blackberry picking during a particular time of year.