Analyzing The Poem 'Blackberries'

W.E.B. Du Bois has contributed greatly to contemporary sociological thinking because he began a conversation of what it means to be “other” in this American Society. In his conversation of what it means to be other he constructed and included three major concepts that continue to resonate till this day. His concepts include “the color-line”, “the veil”, and the “double consciousness” (Appelrouth and Edles, 269). Together, these concepts not only described past experiences of blacks in American society (e.g., slavery) but also continue to remind us that the relation of whites and people of color remains complex. In Du Bois’s own words, “the Nation has not yet found peace from its sins” (273).

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

A large portion of this poem is comparing the difference between black and white. In the poem it practically says “what if all the black is now white, and all the white is now black?”, then goes on to give some examples like “Black Presidents,

Two of the poems written by Seamus Heaney, “Digging” and “Blackberry Picking”, contain recurring themes while both discussing entirely different scenes. The first poem, “Digging”, talks about Heaney’s memories of hearing his father digging in the potato garden outside the house. The second poem, “Blackberry-Picking”, carries a similar solemn tone, while describing another memory of Heaney’s of his experience with picking blackberries. These poems by Heaney share similar themes of reflection of his past experiences in which he dissects important life lessons from everyday events such as the passage of time and the uncertainty of life.

In Woodchucks, a poem by Maxine Kumin, a gardener is having problems with woodchucks invading her garden. She attempts to kill the woodchucks with cyanide gas, but the Woodchucks wouldn’t die. The pacifist gardener, resorts to violence and shoots the woodchucks with a rifle. She was hoping for an easy solution but ended up going against her peace loving ways and turned violent. Throughout the poem, Maxine Kumin slowly reveals the underlying meaning of her writing. Kumin emphasizes that there are violent thoughts and tendencies in every individual by referencing real life events, by escalading the tone of the poem, and by using a series of literary devices.

The beginning of the poem starts off with African Americans going to the North and seeing faces that resemble theirs in Harlem. They are remembered of the hardships in the South but their aim is to get to the North where there is a better life. The key words “cotton and green pastures” show us the escape route that those of color are leaving to get a better life. The poem cites that “Cotton still stuck in their shoes, Zotts ! waiting to be shipped back to green pastures. The idea of escaping and moving away is in the determination to move on even though you are tired and dirty from the cotton stuck in the shoes waiting for many different opportunities.

Black symbolizes death. The black box for drawing and the slip of paper with a black pot are symbols tend to the ending. The one who gets the “big price” is Tessie Hutchinson who disputes the drawing twice. She is the one not following the rule, doubts the ritual. And the purpose that the villagers doing this drawing by forgotten the point of it, is to get rid of people fall off the road, to keep their village in a traditional way, in their eyes.

The lyrics of the song have contains a handful of imagery describing African Americans being lynched. For example, “Blood on the leaves and blood on the root”, is a very descriptive example and puts an image in your mind of seeing a tree with African Americans hanging with blood dripping from their bodies (genius.com). This line makes it seem like the blood that is dripping from the people hanging is feeding the tree’s root, and this could symbolize growth because America was a growing country back then and still is today. Back then, African Americans were physically and mentally abused, and the point of the song was to put an end to that and it did eventually. Today, African Americans are still being discriminated for job opportunities because of stereotypes people made that make African Americans look bad. Throughout the course of time, we did make changes, which relates to the line, “Blood on the leaves and blood on the root”. Another line the depicts a very cruel image is, “Here is fruit for crows to pluck” (genius.com) This line has a very dark meaning and image because crows always symbolize evil and darkness. The fact that this line puts a picture of bodies being devoured by crows in your mind, proves that Holiday uses very strong imagery in the context of Strange Fruit. From these two lines from the song, we learned that

The third line states the speaker's purpose. He is going out "to eat the blackberries for breakfast." This line shows that the speaker not only has an attraction to the berries aesthetic qualities but also craves them to satiate his appetite. The speaker's appetite for the berries is later paralleled to his appetite for words. In the next line, the speaker describes the stalks of the blackberry bushes as "very prickly." This is the first negative image used in association with the blackberries. All the previous images have been positive characteristics of blackberries- fat, overripe, icy, and black. Perhaps, this negative image of the prickly stalks is being used to show that along with pleasure invariably comes pain in the natural world. This same idea used in the context of the words suggests the two-fold potential of words to both benefit and harm. In the next line, the prickly stalks are attributed as a penalty that "they [blackberry bushes] earn for knowing the black art." This imagery of the flowering of the bushes being a black art lends a magical, bewitching quality to the blackberries, an idea that there is something wickedly tempting about the berries. In connecting this idea to the "word" metaphor, it shows that the ability to tempt and persuade with words can also be a form of black art. In the next line, the speaker talks about standing among the blackberries and lifting the stalks to his mouth where "the

In this quote the “coffins of black'; symbolize the chimneys (554). Ultimately this all symbolizes the boys’ death because of their terrible life cleaning chimneys at such a young age. In the next stanza an Angel comes “And he opened the coffins and set them all free,'; which symbolizes the boys’ death and escape to heaven. All of these symbols cause feelings of sympathy in the reader, hopefully causing them to want to help these children escape their fate.

Angelina Grimke’s poem, “The Black Finger” is one of the shortest poems that we have read this year. As far as I’m concerned, it is also one of the most intriguing poems that we have read this year. I have read the poem at least thirty or forty times trying to pick up on new things that I may have missed before. In all of my readings I haven’t necessarily picked up on any new words or phrases that lead me to believe new things. I have, however, formed new visions of what she is trying to say and why she uses certain things and objects in the text. After you talked about it in class, you pretty much convinced me that she was just painting a picture of a beautiful scene that included a sunset and a tree, and

The two short stories “Black Swan Green” written by David Mitchell and “Letters To A Young Poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke both share a common central idea. In both stories, there is a mentee looking for advice from their mentors. The mentees have a passion for poetry and are aspiring poets. The mentors inform their mentees that someone who wants to be a poet should get their motivation from natural aspects. For one thing, It’s your natural beauty that makes you who you are as a person and a poet. Poetry is for yourself, your thoughts and ideas, not an audience.

At first glance this poem seems a happy tale of childhood. These are memories that make the heart smile. Images of heavy summer storms full of rain, alternating with bright, joyous sunshine, full bushels of blackberries waiting to be picked; these are images most can relate with. The reader can taste the bitter-sweetness of the summer’s first blackberry, feel the scratch of briars against their own skin, sense the excitement and butterflies in their own stomachs as they race to gather all the wondrous blackberries they can, followed by the anger and the disappointment when the blackberries rot and ferment before the readers’ eyes. However, if the reader were to take the diction and imagery quite literally, a somewhat different picture is aroused. “…a glossy purple clot…” (line 3) describing the first ripened blackberry, brings to mind the picture of a nasty blood clot in someone’s veins, why would Heaney compare blackberries to blood clots?

All poetry aims to communicate an experience; a body of memory, sensation, or wisdom that contributes significant meaning to the life of a poet and of all human beings. It is the mystery of literature that one may speak of a single, physical incident, yet draw deep universal conclusions from it. Like the Christian dogma of the Word made Flesh, the Christ both fully mortal and fully divine, the best of poetry dwells paradoxically in the realms of both literal and figurative. Seamus Heaney's poem, Blackberry-Picking, exhibits a precise, elegant poetic technique that permits such a simultaneous existence. Through his use of overt religious allusions, intense, metaphorical imagery, and sharply contrasting symbols, Heaney reveals a young protagonist's journey from childhood to adulthood, or in essence, immaturity to maturity, with a focus on the speaker’s reconciliation with an inconvenient yet inevitable truth - in essence, creating a Bildungsroman.

Alliteration is used quite often in the poem. Throughout the whole poem, there is a frequent repetition of “b” words, such as “big dark blobs burned”. In the readers mind, this creates a more powerful image of the berries, and gives a strong impression of their shape