“Blackberry-Picking,” by Seamus Heaney not only literally describes the act of picking berries each year, but also serves as a comparison to the realities in life, light and dark through his usage of symbolism, imagery, diction, and form.
Heaney does a wonderful job of blending in sneaky symbols in a very image and sensory driven poem by merging both the image and the symbol and diction in his lines. With the berries, we are presented with youth and the promise of an expectation being fulfilled: the ripened, harvest ready fruit. Not only are the berries such, they also represent a “glimmer of hope” (Shmoop).
Berries themselves are a pleasing thing to hear, and the reader is given the pleasure of experience and flavor with the word. Also the Spring brings with it the unripe and fresh fruit, giving the parallel metaphor of life with one’s inexperience and promise within. In the lines 7-8, though, the metaphor shifts to the desires in life, the things one lusts for and at such a young age, cannot resist. The sadness in the symbolism is that the berries also symbolize gluttony and greed because the berries youthful and desirable qualities simply cannot last forever, but is desired to be eternal and perfect, like that of a humans desire to remain young, beautiful, and ever lasting.
The diction and imagery in the poem, while closely aligned with the symbolism of the poem, stands out on its own, however. Words are easily picked up on within the first few lines, such as, “glossy purple clot” and “flesh” which illustrate a harsher view on the berry. One is unable to resist thinking of blood, bruising, and shiny skin. Damage, ultimately, and aging. This allows the parallel of life to be replaced in the berries position, showing that despite the “lust” and excitement of the fresh fruit and the anticipation of its ripeness, the change and altering of time and natures toll will be known.
Finally, the form of the poem is rigidly traditional, using rhymed lines in iambic pentameter to control the images and tone of the piece. The meter is represented through two uneven stanzas of iambic pentameter and the rhyme is unnatural, but successful none the less such as in the familiar sounds of “Sun” and Ripe-un” in the next. Heaney is a master of this form of rhyme, and uses it throughout the poem.
The poem “Blackberry-Picking” illustrates that Seamus Heaney had a very realistic, rational ability to reflect on life and its unpredictability. He used the blackberries to show that a well liked thing can be viewed both lightly and darkly in one poem to show the light and the dark in life’s situations. Doing so, he demonstrated his ability to control diction, symbolism, imagery, and form to represent life successfully through blackberries.
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