Seamus Heany's Blackberry Picking

“It was a spring afternoon in West Florida. “First Janie is exploring the nature of spring. Spring as being part of a season. A season that seems to her like a regrowth of flowers and life. “Spending every minute that she could steal from her chores. “Janie has being putting aside her chores to explore nature. “It had called her to come and gaze on a mystery.” Jamie felt that there was something that nature or the blooming pear tree want to teach her. Janis’s attraction with the pear tree blooms open her mind to concedes with her occurrence as sexual being. One that is “stirred’ that make her feel like the caress of an awaking sexual feeling was starting in her life. With all this changes in her innocent mind and body she start asking herself “What? How? Why?” Of this things.

Written in 1980, Galway Kinnell's Blackberry Eating is a poem which creates a strong metaphoric relationship between the tangible objects of blackberries, and the intangible objects of words. The speaker of the poem feels a strong attraction to the sensory characteristics (the touch, taste, and look) of blackberries. The attraction he feels at the beginning of the poem exclusively for blackberries is paralleled in the end by his appetite and attraction to words. The rush the speaker gets out of blackberry eating is paralleled to the enjoyment he finds in thinking about certain words; words which call up the same sensory images the blackberries embody.

The speaker’s attitude here of gratification is further demonstrated through imagery. Once again, the imagery, like the diction, is sensory. In the sentence, “I gave him persimmons, swelled, heavy as sadness, and sweet as love,” the reader can imagine, by the use of a simile, exactly what the speaker is trying to make us see. Other images that can be easily captured are the last lines, “the texture of persimmons, in your palm, the ripe weight.” The speaker also provides the reader with the color of the persimmon by comparing it to the sun. When he says, “my mother said every persimmon has a sun inside, something golden, glowing warm as my face,” he is trying to help us visualize exactly what this specific fruit looks and feels like. All of the information the speaker provides further proves his complete understanding of his past misconceptions, which thus show his attitude of contentment through recognition.

He is disgusted with the way the gentlefolks are handing themselves around nature, and the narrator wants the reader to picture in their mind the image he is seeing to illustrate his disdain for the gentlefolk in a different manner. Then along with that sees them as cold hearted and conscienceless, as the gentlefolk are able to do such things, as the speaker says,”...without a pang of remorse…” In lines 25-26 the narrator says,” Is its colour any prettier, or its scent any sweeter, when you do know.” This sarcastic statement illustrates that by cutting up a flower to comprehend what it is made of , no person can gain appreciation for its simplicity, being its colour and scent are natural. The gentlefolk would destroy such a thing as a flower, which poses no immediate gain by destroying it, the author shows great

One of the most pervasive themes in this passage is that of a spreading decay that is taking over the society. This is first expressed in quite a literal sense, as an actual decay of fruit and produce, which spreads like a virus across the American countryside and farming lands. Due to the economic mismanagement of the farming industry, fruit and other produce are left to rot and decay on the trees because they are not picked by the farmers. The text gives many examples of different fruits being left to decay on the farms. We see, for example, the cherries, that are described at first as “full and sweet”, being left to turn into seeds which “drop and dry with black shreds hanging from them”. The purple prunes, which now “carpet the

Lee perfectly uses the weight of peaches to illustrate his idea that they subject to the law of gravity that force everything to weighs down. Lee uses peaches to explain his father’s life, labor, love and death. “and his arms grow weak, as he labors under the weight of peaches.” This poem also has a powerful tone of feeling complexity as well as bitter sweetness of nostalgia as he begins with “No easy thing to bear, the weight of sweetness.” The sweetness means a kind of taste or tenderness however he describes it in terms of weight and he generate his powerful idea about emotional complexity.

Obviously the author has lived through the depression and was black because one could not write something so accurate in accordance to that time period and have one feel the deep emotional impact of her writings without experiencing it personally.  In the first sentence she writes “…all I seem to remember is dust—the brown, crumbly dust of late summer—arid, sterile dust that gets in to the eyes and makes them water, gets into the throat and between the toes of the bare brown feet.”  In this phrase the words give a harsh, cruel feeling of how the depression was, which could then explain how she remembers the depression and that it was a hard time for her.  Most likely it was a significantly hopeless moment in her life.  In the next paragraph she writes “When the memory of those marigolds flashes across my mind, a strange nostalgia comes with it and remains long after the picture has faded.”  Knowing the marigolds symbolize hope the word “nostalgia” gives a feeling of longing, since the denotative meaning is yearning.  When stating the marigolds give a “strange nostalgia” the author could be thinking how she, sometime in her life, longed to have hope.  She needed to have something to look forward to or just something to look at to give her hope.  Later, towards the end of the story she explains “…Innocence involves an unseeing acceptance of things at face value, an ignorance of the area below the surface.”  The words she uses give a sense of wisdom

From the beginning of the poem, the speaker tells of his naïve, consuming world of blackberries. Because the

Areas we enter are sources of Security Theater that is not address and that contributes to the increase of shootings: in specific I am referring to “Gun free zones.” Over 98% percent of mass shootings and gun violence occurs in areas where guns are restricted or completely banned (Crime Prevention Research, 2018). Out of a hundred fifty shootings only three would not occur in a “gun free zone.” Signs are often posted outside buildings, movie theaters, and parks to supposedly prevent those that may be carrying a gun, concealed or otherwise, from bringing it on to the premises. However, the only protection that a “gun free zones” provides is helping people feel that they are safe without doing anything to ensure their safety. Only law abiding citizens will follow the rules put into place to make an area a “gun free zone.” This causes a disarming of the people who could

The word "remember" in line two may be considered a play on words; re-member, or dismemberment as in the case of an abortion. "Damp small pulps" in line three sounds animalistic, as if Brooks is saying "pups" instead of "pulps." If the word "pulp" was in fact intended, it is then part of the poem's imagery, indicating something that is crushed,

fair”, you can tell this is the voice of a child. There is also a

I like persimmons. I like persimmons. I like persimmons. There. I’ve repeated the phrase thrice. Now, if I asked you to identify whether I like persimmons or not, you would, almost certainly, say “yes.” Having the same statement reiterated three times makes one more confident that it’s not only important, but that it’s a fact in this context! In Lucille Clifton’s “white lady,” a tone of desperation is conveyed through repetition of words, phrases, and sentence structures. Moreover, repetition highlights that desperation is unique not only to the loved ones of the cocaine addicts, but to White Lady as well. As an aside before we begin, I will note that tone is a complex element within poetry. Hence, it is often conveyed through a mish-mash of literature devices, such as repetition, line breaks, diction, etc. Therefore, I will not claim that this discussion is a comprehensive one that describes all the myriad ways tone has been emphasized in the poem; I will merely discuss one contributing factor to tone.

Although this is a short poem, there are so many different meanings that can come from the piece. With different literary poetic devices such as similes, imagery, and symbolism different people take away different things from the poem. One of my classmates saw it as an extended metaphor after searching for a deeper connection with the author. After some research on the author, we came to learn that the

This paper is about “After Apple Picking,” by Robert Frost, from the perspectives of Carl Phillips and Priscilla Paton. I would like to focus more on Carl Phillips discussion of “After Apple Picking” as his article has more focus on an actual argument on what “After Apple Picking” is about compared to Paton’s article which is more about how Frost went about writing his poems though his usage of metaphors and vague colloquialisms . Neither article was solely about “After Apple Picking,” but both had a few good observations and comments about the poem. Phillips main observation, and argument, was that “After Apple Picking” was about restlessness and ambition. “It’s a poem of restlessness, the restlessness of an ambition that spurs us towards

Eye color, height, even most of your personality is inherited from your parents, and those same traits from their parents, and so on. Every offspring inherits traits from their parents, but Seamus Heaney discusses the trait of hard work ethic. A work ethic so strong it is passed down through the generations of a family. It is a hard work that over time has provided a way of life and means of supporting a family. Through use of flashbacks and vivid imagery, we get a glimpse at this amazing way of life.