In Seamus Heany's poem Blackberry-Picking he not only conveys a literal description of picking blackberries but also a deeper understanding of the experience through his use of imagery and form. Both of these elements of analysis are broken into specific parts of the poem to bring out the poem's form.
Heany uses colorful imagery to convey his understandings of the experience. For example, ".a glossy clot.," is clearly one of his literal interpretations. In addition, "Like thinkened wine: summer's blood," is one of his deeper understandings. Heaney is saying that all of summer's hard work is put into this experience of gathering berries. Furthermore, when he wrote that, "A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache" it conveys both literal and a deeper meaning. The rat-grey fur is literal while glutting mean that the fungus was overly invading the blackberries like some kind of disease.
The poem is broken down into several different parts. For example, the poem will begin with a few lines of the literal sense, "Late August.heavy rain.blackberries would ripen." Then he conveys a deeper sense, starting on line six when he describes the fruit in the beginning followed by the struggle of how they got there, ".summer's blood was in it." In addition, he describes how they picked the berries all day then in line 15, compared themselves to a killer, "palms stcky as Bluebeard's".
Although this poem lacks the form and rythm of a traditional poem it is easy to understand what Heany is trying to convey through the poems imagery and diction. Summer's pleasures don't last long.
