1999
Read the following poem carefully, paying particular attention to the physical intensity of the language. Then write a well-organized essay in which you explain how the poet conveys not just a literal description of picking blackberries but a deeper understanding of the whole experience. You may wish to include analysis of such elements as diction, imagery, metaphor, rhyme, and form.
(Suggested time—40 minutes)
Blackberry-Picking
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.
5You 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
10Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato drills1
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
15Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.2
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.3
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
20The 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.
—Seamus Heaney
1 Planted rows
2 Bluebeard is a character in a fairy tale who murders his wives.
3 Barn
Sample CC (Level 5) – 9 on the AP rubric
In Seamus Heaney’s poem Blackberry-Picking, the intensity of the nostalgia along with the powerful literary elements included present the reader with a blackberry-picking experience that truly transcends the physical surroundings. Through form, word choice, imagery, and rhyme the author conveys what a powerful and moving experience nature can be.
Vivid imagery allows the reader to be fully drawn into the realm of blackberry picking. The author’s use of color and lush detail allow for a clear mental picture. Seamus Heaney describes the blackberries, once ripened, as “a glossy purple clot,” (line 3), or even “red, green, hard as a knot” (ln 4). Perhaps the passage of time does have an effect upon the berries, varying their colors an textures. The physical description of the eating of a blackberry is nearly sensuous, the berries themselves tasting “like thickened wine” (ln 6), or as “blood” (ln 6). The metaphoric comparison of blood to the blackberries implies a “lust” (7) for the “stains” (7) left behind. Perhaps, though, it is only a symbol of the pleasure of blackberry picking itself. The description of different containers such as “milk cans, pea tins, and jam pots” (9) serves to draw the reader further into the experience of berry picking. The poem incorporates many sensory elements such as color, sight, taste and texture, the details engulfing the reader. Seamus Heaney mentions that the berry’s “flesh was sweet” (5), and the narrator and his companion’s hands were “peppered with thorn pricks” (16) by the sticky berries which are much akin to blood. Later, once he has conveyed the pleasure of picking the berries, he tells of his later disappointment through his description of “a rat-grey fungus” (19), and “fermenting” fruit (21). The “flesh would turn sour” (21) and “smelt of rot” (23), conveying the narrator’s disappointment that the passage of time had taken the pleasure out of the blackberries, if only until “late August” (1) of “each year” (24). The lush word choice shows the reader how much pleasure the narrator takes in berry picking.
The author makes use of rhyming couplets of asort, with the last syllables of the sentence essentially rhyming. The irregularities in the rhyme only serve to draw the reader’s attention to the most important parts. In the last paragraph, “byre” (17) and “fur” (18) can be spoken to rhyme, though the next four lines are not even close to rhyming. Yet the poem’s final two lines, the final couplet, has perfect rhyme between “rot” (23) and “not” (24). This is to underscore the meaning of the poem itself. There is no pleasure without pain and disappointment, yet the rotting of the berries is only a temporary setback until the next year, the next August. The narrator himself realizes that the berries would not last, yet he still hopes they will remain year after year.
The form of this poem is mostly rhyming couplets broken into two paragraphs. The first paragraph provides the reader with an adequately lush, sensory description of the pleasure of collecting the sweet berries. The second paragraph relays to the reader the narrator’s growing sense of disappointment and misplaced hope that time would not take its toll on his “cache” (19) of blackberries, the remainder rotting because of his greed and desire to take too much, and his inability to prevent time from having its way with the berries and their “stinking” (20) juice. This and the diction made use of allow the reader to experience the pleasure (“sweet flesh” (5)), pain (“thorn pricks” (16)), hope, and disapointment of the narrator. The statement “Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not,” (24) demonstrates how much the narrator truly loved the sensation & the hope that blackberry picking permitted him, and underscores the meanings that you cannot run from time, but you can repeat what has been done in the past to reaffirm that pleasant and hopeful experience.
The author writes this poem not only to tell of blackberry picking, but to tell of the sweetness of hope in the hopeless. His colorful and powerful choices of words and structure draw the reader’s attention to his true meaning, and his feeling that although time destroys all things, people can look back in retrospect on the good times or even repeat the experience to recapture feelings that have passed.