Blackberry-Picking By Seamus Heaney
Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then 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.
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. 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.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.
Explication By me
In the poem Blackberry-Picking, Seamus Heaney uses nature imagery, varied stanza length, and concrete language to share the pains of growing up and how quickly time passes in life. In the poem, the speaker talks about how they would always go black-berry picking with someone and pick a large amount of them to store in a barn, but all of the berries would ferment and grow fungi. This leads the speaker to feel resentful, thinking that it is unfair how the berries do not keep, whenever they pick them, year after year.
An early example of nature imagery in the poem are the lines, “Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it / Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for / Picking.” (Heany, lines 6-8). The speaker likens blackberries to wine and blood within this line, and goes further to push the simile of wine by saying the blackberries left them with lust for picking more, like how alcohol can impair your senses and cause you to be more lustful and selfish. This is one of two similes in the entire piece, so it stands out from the rest of the poem as a unique language choice. Heany could have used the words want or urge instead of lust, as both would fit with the syllable count of the line, but I believe the word lust fits better with the description of blackberries like wine, for it is more intense than want or urge, lust is more representative of a primal desire that needs to be satiated. Describing the blackberries as wine makes them seem intoxicating, and shows us that the speaker is driven to pick so many berries because of how obsessed they get with the delicious taste.
“With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s. // We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.” (Heaney, lines 16-17), These lines are the only place where a new stanza starts, which I believe is used to show how time has passed as the speaker and companion were collecting berries, and now they have brought all their berries to a new location. It also has a mild tonal shift, switching from the childlike enjoyment of picking berries with sticky palms to a duller reality. The word hoarded stands out to me, as though the speaker is greedily keeping all the berries to themself. Heaney could have used something like stowed or gathered, but hoarded is a much darker choice based on the connotation of greed it often comes with. The later use of the word glutted also draws upon this idea, like the fungus is greedily gobbling up the speaker’s hard work. This stanza break also shows the quick passage of time. While the speaker may have spent hours upon hours collecting the precious berries, the reader only needs to look past a line break to see the results of their time, almost like all that time passed by in a flash, not really mattering anymore. Another important thing to note is the length of the two stanzas. The first is twice the length of the second, which i think serves to boost how excited the speaker is about picking the blackberries, but then their realization of the rotting berries in the second stanza is faster and with less caesuras and enjambed lines, giving the reader less time to take the reality in before the poem ends on a sorrowful note.
The ending lines, “I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair / That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. / Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not.” (Heaney, lines 22-24), show concrete images to support the subjects of growing up and the passage of time. It’s obvious that this is not the speaker’s first time experiencing this, from the way they always felt like crying and that each year they hoped the blackberries would keep. I find this interesting that the speaker clearly keeps spending their time collecting blackberries even though they know it won’t turn out differently, but they still hold out that childish hope that maybe this time is different. I believe the concrete image of crying and the smell of rot compared to the speaker’s hopefulness is a great example of growing up, as the speaker still hopes that the berries will stay good, even though they are aware that they won’t. This is a very child-like thing to me, the hopefulness in the face of dark truth, and to blame the natural process of rotting for how unfair it is that the berries go bad. Heany didn’t have to mention that this happened every year, or that the speaker always felt like crying, but he wrote that in so that the reader would know this is a recurring moment for the speaker, and yet they keep on picking berries in the hopes that something will change this time. That is why I believe Blackberry-Picking is about growing up and the unpleasant passing of time.
