Analysis Of The Poem Blackberry-Picking

Do you remember when you were a child and staying up late delighted you? How you were always impatient to grow up and everything was spontaneous and unplanned? Before we knew it, the years whizzed by in a blur and we noticed our lives had become dull and grey. Now, we follow routine – we go to work, go home and work more until our eyes are dry and heavy, always hoping that tomorrow holds something new. We follow this routine for a majority of our lives until we are weak, decrepit and unable experience the adventures we had once planned to. Many poets recognised this cycle in their own lives, expressing their regret and fear through beautiful words strung together in a poem. Broadcasting an episode on Get Poetic about life and disappointment
would touch many viewers’ hearts, provoking insightful thoughts and acting as a vehicle for personal change.
Seamus Heaney’s 1966 poem Blackberry-Picking is a perfect example of an exquisitely crafted poem that inspires deeper thought about life and age. It is a personal recollection of a defining moment in Heaney’s life. Being raised on a county in Ireland, Heaney spent most of his childhood on farmland and recalls his summer activity of picking juicy blackberries as a boy. He anticipates devouring them but heartbreakingly realises that the blackberries will always be bitter and spoiled upon arriving at the barn. He cries in despair, realising that life is not the rose-tinted painting he once thought. This memory is defining as it marks the moment he relinquishes his hopeful and youthful spirit and accepts the disappointment of life. Audiences would empathise with his experience and recognise life’s disappointment through the eyes of a young boy.
Blackberry-Picking contains two stanzas which is effective for its reading brevity, considering audience attention spans.
The first stanza sets the scene by describing the poet’s naïve hope and optimism. Heaney emphasises the boy’s youth and eagerness by glorifying the full, juicy berries through the use of imagery: “a glossy purple clot”. The audience effectively identifies with the boy, seeing the berries like an eager child would. The use of the simile, “Like thickened wine”, and the metaphor “summer’s blood” reiterates the vivid, childlike sensation of the boy’s lust for the berries by describing the warmth and likening the juiciness to blood. Readers understand his gluttony and consequently sympathise with him when the berries rot, reminding them of their own disheartening experiences. He personifies the briars scratching at the boy’s ankle to further communicate his experience and remind readers of the summer farm setting. Heaney slowly reveals that the boy becomes overcome with lust for the berries through the simile, “Our hands were peppered / With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's”. Audiences empathise with the young child who, overexcited and greedy, went through the extremity of pain to obtain more berries. This makes the realisation more crushing later. He likens their berry-stained palms to Bluebeard’s blood-stained hands, beginning the darker undertone of the
poem.
In contrast to the first stanza, the second stanza describes the disappointment and devastation Heaney felt when he returned to the byre with his berries. He reveals to the audience that upon washing the berries he found a fur, which he describes as “rat-grey” in contrast to the bright colours previously described. Additionally, he describes the berries as “stinking”. The oxymoron conveys the mark of disappointment where “the sweet flesh would turn sour”. The berries are a symbol of his full, youthful hope, which have rotted and spoiled over time, much like a child’s optimism and spirit as they age. This jarring realisation makes the boy weep, like we would in life as we recognise this pattern too. The regular rhyme in the first stanza: “clot”/”knot”, “sun”/”just one” keeps flow until it breaks rhyme after line five. This breakage suggests a disruption in the situation, where the child becomes overcome by greed. Assonance is reintroduced in the end lines: “rot”/ “not”, where the continuation shows that Heaney, like us, has finally accepted the disappointment of life.
Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney leaves a feeling of nostalgia and loss as we experience the familiar hope and disappointment of a child through figurative language and rhythm. The poet’s message of a child’s loss of the naiveté and hope is effective, beautifully written and, on Get Poetic, would provoke audiences to personally reflect on their own lives. The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost would act as a vehicle for personal change and complement Blackberry-Picking as it, similarly, describes the regret and fear that life will not be worthy or fulfilling.
A brief analysis will be given for the 1915 poem The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. The narrator of the poem laments and sighs about how they do not know where to go and fear taking one path over another as they stroll through the woods. Frost made this poem as a gentle mockery of his friend Edward Thomas, who would often regret his choices in life. Frost’s poem acted as a vehicle for change as it inspired Thomas to sign up for World War I, causing him to die in battle. The underlying message of the poem, following the theme of life from Blackberry-Picking, is about life’s indecisions and how the choices you make shape you.
The poem is split into four stanzas with five lines each, showing the small lines of thought of the narrator. Regular rhyme is used in each line: “would”/”could”/”stood”, “growth”/”both” to give a personal feeling that the reader is walking with the poet through the woods. The setting is suggested to be in the woods during Autumn, as shown by Frost’s use of imagery and metaphors, “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood”. This gives a calm, contemplative feeling to the poem which alludes to the age of the narrator as life goes by and he is still deciding which path to take. The extended metaphor of ‘roads’ is used to symbolise the many paths that one can take in life. The narrator is indecisive and feels uncertain about the future, much like a large majority of our society, as he metaphorically attempts to “look down one [path] as far as [he] could” and decide which path yields better results. Unfortunately for the narrator, and us, life is not always predictable and the future cannot be seen, as shown through the metaphor that the path is “bent in undergrowth” and concealed.
The second stanza contemplates another path, which appears to have “wanted wear”, personifying the path as desiring more people to walk down it. He contemplates taking this path but decides that both paths “had worn… really about the same”, metaphorically showing that our lives are uncertain and there are no solid ways to decide which path to take. Ultimately, the poet takes the path “less travelled by”, stating it “made all the difference”. This is metaphoric for a person who makes a choice in life that is less conventional, which changes his life drastically – but, like in our personal lives, it is uncertain if the difference is good or bad.
Disappointment and life are relevant themes as the topic of existentialism continues to grow in today’s society. Get Poetic would connect to many viewers, young and old, by showcasing the thought-provoking poems Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney and The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. Both poems are skilfully crafted and provoke audiences to think deeply about life as they delve into the disappointment that comes with age as we grow older and reflect on missed opportunities. The poems would complement each other on an episode of Get Poetic, as The Road Not Taken acts a vehicle for personal change and inspires audiences to seek and do worthy things whilst Blackberry-Picking¬ reflects on the disappointment of age.