Berry picking poem seamus heaney biography

Sara Rodríguez Arias The Importance of Blackberry-Picking in Seamus Heaney’s Poetry While researching poems written by Seamus Heaney, I realized that it was of great interest to me because of the contrasts that the poet establishes throughout the poem, and its rich language. I found that this poem had a similar thematic basis to Death of a Naturalist; a poem I had read by myself a few years ago. Furthermore, I could watch televised Seamus Heaney’s Nobel Prize, and when I read the authors we were going to deal in class, I became highly familiarized with his poetry. I found a few poets who focused on the importance of childhood. This author often places the transience from childhood to adulthood in a very beautiful way. Even when the reader passes the surface of Blackberry- Picking, his memories of infancy come back wrapped in a nostalgic and melancholic atmosphere. However, when the reader reaches the end of this poem, he realizes that nothing is permanent, and life itself changes because everything comes to an end. My aim in this paper is to bring about a deeper analysis by connecting these elements with Heaney’s personal life throughout this poem. To achieve this goal, I have organized my paper into four sections. In the first section, I provide a biography about the poet. In the second, I discuss the poem from a literary point of view. In the third section, I present research about the poem. In the final section, as the conclusion, I outline interesting material I gathered to provide some depth to the essay. These include: (i) a web page which contains the main videos of my presentation, (ii) my written paper, and (iii) other contributing materials such as: schema, theses, a map, etc. I also include an appendix that contains images from the three handbooks I examined. Seamus Heaney was born on April 13, in Northern Ireland. ( He is alive ) He is a prolific writer who is very well known for his fabulous poems and for winning several major awards. Among the most notable prizes are: The Nobel Prize in Literature ( ); The Golden Wreath of Poetry ( ); The T. S. Eliot Prize ( ), and The Two Whitebread Prizes ( , and ) Seamus is the son of Patrick Heaney, a Roman Catholic who worked as the owner of a small farmland in County Derry where he developed his activity as a cattle - dealer; and served as a member of the rural council. His mother, Margaret Kathleen McCann worked in her family’s linen.. Heaney grew up in this environment being surrounded by nature, and for this reason, the place where the action takes place in Blackberry – Picking is in a farm. Seamus has had a great career. He has been a lecturer, a translator, a poet, a playwright, and a teacher of rethoric in Oxford, and Harvard. He mainly worked in these Universities but also as a ‘commandeur de l’ Ordre des Arts et Lettres’ in In , Heaney travelled to Belfast to study English Language and Literature at Queen’s University Belfast. Once he graduated with honours, he wrote various articles in local magazines. He is considered to be a representative of the Irish tradition and culture because of the historical roots of its nation. Among his most important works are: The Death of a Naturalist ( ), Door into the Dark ( ), Poems – ( ), Sweeney Astray ( ), Station Island ( ), The Haw Lantern ( ), The Cure of Troy ( ), Seeing Things ( Collection of Poems, in ), Beowulf ( Translation from Old English to modern English ), The Spirit Level ( ), and Electric Light ( ) Blackberry – Picking is a poem that is published in the collection: ‘ Death of a Naturalist ‘ in The meter of the poem is an iambic pentameter, and the rhyme is very peculiar. In this case, it is a half rhyme that has a consonantal sound in common. For example: the word ‘-rain- ’ in the first line and the word ‘-ripen-’ in the second have the consonantal sound ‘-r- ’ in common. In lines three and four the word ‘-clot- ’ has a consonantal sound rhyming with the word ‘-knot- ’ and consonantal sound ‘-t- ’ The rhyme in this poem follows the same pattern: A A B B C C D D E E F F G G H H I I J J K K L L. Concerning the literary devices we can highlight the metaphors, simile, onomatopoeia and diction. The metaphors are: ‘ then red ones inked up and that hunger sent us out with milk cans, pea teans, jam – pots where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. ’ ( Lines 8, 9 and 10 ) ‘ We trekked and picked up until the cans were full. ’ ( Line 12 ) ‘ a rat - grey fungus.’ ( Line 19 ) ‘ The sweet flesh would turn sour. ’ ( Line 21 ) ‘ Lovely canfuls smelt of rot. ’ ( Line 23 ) ‘ Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not ’ ( Lines 22, 23 and 24 ) ‘ The Blackberry would ripen ’ ( Line 2 ) ‘ Red, green, hard as a knot ’ ( Line 4 ) ‘ You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet ’ ( Line 5 ) ‘ Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for picking ’ ( Lines 7 and 8 ) ‘ Our hands were peppered with thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s. We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre. But when the bath was filled we found a fur, a rat- grey fungus, glutting on our cache’ ( Lines ) The similes are: ‘ Red, green, hard as a knot ’ ( Line 4 ) ‘ You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet like thickened wine ’ ( Lines 5 and 6 ) ‘ Round hayfields, cornfields and potato – drills. We trekked and picked until the tinkling bottom had been covered with green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned like a plate of eyes’ ( Lines 11 – 15 ) ‘ With thorn pricks our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s ’ ( Line 16 ) The onomatopoeia is: ‘ Tinkling - bottom ’ ( Line 13 ), and the examples of diction we can find are: ‘ Sweet like a thickened wine ’ ( Lines 5 and 6 ) ‘ Leave stains upon the tongue ’ ( Line 7 ) ‘ Out with milk cans, pea teams and jam-pots ’ ( Line 9 ) and ‘ the briars that scratched and the wet grass that bleached their boots’ ( Line 10 ) The main topics in this poem are: childhood, the transience of the things, the relation between the present, past and future, experience, youth, temptation, greed, lust, sacrifice, mortality, hope, tradition, and desires. These themes can be found in the following lines: In lines 1 and 2: ‘ Late August, given heavy rain and sun, for a full week the blackberries would ripen’ ( Experience ), lines 3 and 4: ‘ At first just one a glossy purple clot. Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.’ ( The process of maturation: how the colours of blackberries changes through the different stages of life, youth, and hopes ), lines 5 and 6: ‘ you ate that first one and its flesh was sweet like thickened wine; summer’s blood was in it. ’ ( Temptation, but it also represents the Eucharist: wine ( The blood of Christ ), and flesh ( Human flesh ), lines 7 and 8: ‘ leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for picking. ’ ( Temptation and sexual desires ), lines 8, 9, and ‘ then the red ones inked up and that hunger sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. ’ ( Passion and sexual desires ), lines 10, 11, 12, 13 and ‘ where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills. We trekked and picked until the cans were full until the tinkling bottom had been covered with green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned like a plate of eyes.’ ( Hopes and desires ), lines 14, 15 and ‘ our hands were peppered with thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s ( Greed, lust and hopes ), lines 17, 18 and ‘ we hoarded the fresh berries in the byre. But when the bath was filled we found a fur, a rat - grey fungus, glutting on our cache.’ ( Inmortality, the wish of being young ), lines 20, 21, 22, 23 and ‘ the juice was stinking too. Once of the bush the fruit fermented, the sweeter flesh would turn sour. I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair that all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. Each year I hope they’d keep, knew they would not. ’ ( Getting old with the passing of years, the dying process ) This poem is told in a past tense and tries to visualize childhood. The action develops in ‘ Late August given heavy rain and sun.’ The narrator is an omniscient narrator who knows everything about these people who are picking up blackberries. When they are picking up this fruit, they realize that there are different types of this delicacy: ‘ red, green, hard as a knot ’. These people feel anxious for picking up all blackberries they can in order to fulfill their expectations and hopes, however, at the end of the second stanza, this sense of accomplishment and achievement is transformed in a sour experience: ‘ I always felt like crying, it wasn’t fair that all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. ’ Hence, the narrator regrets about getting old with the passing of years, he wants to live those magnificent moments of innocence and joy where pain and sufferings barely existed. From my point of view, this is an autobiographical poem that deals with Heaney’s childhood, in this case, how he picked up blackberries when he was in his farmhouse with his parents, and nine brother and sister. According to this poem, in line 16 there is an important simile: ‘ with thorn pricks, our palm sticky as Bluebeard’s. ’ This simile is making a comparison between the red color of blackberries that is ‘sticky’, and the Bluebeard; a French folktale that tells the story of a king who is very rich and lives in a castle. This beau marriages six times to a different women, but no one knows what happened with them. Every time he got married to a woman, he gave the keys of the castle so that she could see the treasures of the mansion, however, the aristocrat did not allow the lady to enter in a special room. At the end of this tale, every wife felt the temptation of entering this specific territory, and as it was expected, they were killed by the king. Helen Vendler considered Heaney as: ‘ the Irish poet whose pen has been the conscience of his country. ’ We know that Seamus tries to reflect the reality in which Ireland was in those times, for this reason, he is not only considered a good writer, but also, one of the foremost poets of his generation. Besides, he has been compared to poets such as: ‘ Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, Michael Harnett, and Ted Hughes. ’ According to critics: ‘ Heaney’s later poems continue to address the unrest in Northern Ireland, and they incorporate a more personal tone as Heaney depicts the loss of friends and relatives to the violence. ’ Seaney did not feel good at all because one of his friend died due to a bomb in a Protestant Pub. ( His friend was Catholic, , and in those times, it is significant how Ireland was having hard moments due to religious problems: Protestants against Catholics. ) Heaney is compared to William Butler Yeats, and his works are often judged for being considered superior to other English poets. To conclude, Blackberry - Picking is a beautiful poem due to its freshness and because it tries to represent the reality in which Ireland was at those hard times. Apart from this, it is important to point out how emotions are produced in humans being; from joy to disappointment; from innocence, and magical moments to sufferings. This thought help us to understand that everything comes to an end. For this reason, the contrast being established in the first and second stanza is different; while the first one is referring to the cycle of life, the second focuses on death. The narrator knows that he cannot come back to his childhood, but he has memories, and these memories are permanent in his life though nothing in life lasts forever because we are going to die. Moreover, when we are young we are so excited for everything that we feel the need of fulfilling our expectations picking up all blackberries we can, even green blackberries that are not already mature, however, the moral message in this poem is that in order to take the best blackberries you should wait for they can grow, and how can they grow? Thanks to experience. Sara 10