Blackberry Picking Commentary.

In Seamus Heaney's "Blackberry Picking," the speaker constantly gives the reader images using taste, sight, as well as Heaneys carefully choosen diction. He uses colors such as red, green, grey,to show the reader different types of imagery in his metapphor. The structure of this poem also differs from his other poems such as Storm on the Island, Mid Term Break etc, which plays a significant role in the poem.

First off, I would like to talk about the colors Heaneys uses in "Blackberry Picking." He begins to describe the Blackberries such as the following "At first, just one, a glossy purple clotAmong others, red, green, hard as a knot." This gives a taste as well as a sight imagery as the reader can be able to see the color of the blackberry and being able to imagine the sweetness of the blackcherry. Another taste imagery that gives the blackberry's their sweet taste is inthese lines: "“hard as a knot." This shows how the speaker expresses the joy in able to pickthese ripe blackberries in his experiance when picking them. However later in the second stanza, the speakers describes the grapes as being :“a rat-grey fungus.” This completely shifts the imagery and tone of the poem as he gives a dull image withthe color grey, and descibes it as being a rat fungus like. That gives me a disgusting image, because rats are not that goodof animals, because they can give diseases.

The stanza structure by Heamus is the most important transition of the poem. He shifts from the blackberrys from being such a ripe and delicious taste type of imagery to the "rat-grey fungus" type. Now this transition indicates as how the season goes by, so does the sadness in his poem, by the blackberrys. He describes the juice in the blackberrys now as being "stinking" too in the second stanza. The speaker makes this distigiushen to be able to show that has times passes so does the lost of taste in the blackberrys. This could suggest more, symbolizing that the blackberries represent something more, as now they are corrupted as time passes. I am not sure if he means this with the blackberries, but I feel that the blackberries must represent something more for Heamus to be able to make this point in this poem.

Heamus was able use his diction of colors in his metaphors and similies, in order to establish the right kind of tone in each stanza. I also belive that the two sepreate are too create the effect as the time in summer comes to a conclusion, so does everything else that grows in that season dies off as well. I wish I could have other suggestion on what could the blackberries could represent in this poem. Or it mayjus be the speakers memory when he was young, but Seamus's poems appear way too simple then it actually seems. I think that he presented like this to tell that times changes things.