Digging languageThe poem starts in the present tense. In the first line you find out that the poem is personal because of the word "my". The unusual simile "The squat pen rests, snug as a gun" is odd

In the fourth stanza the persona shows that he has technical expertise by naming the "lug" and the "shaft" which are parts of a spade. This shows that the poet has grown up on the farm and with the equipment. The poet recreates the speed and precision of the digging with sharp cutting sounds such as "tall, tops" and "buried the bright." This is alliteration to recreate the expertise of the digging. We find out that the narrator is only a child at this time because he only plays with the potatoes. We can tell that the poem is about a place in Ireland because it says that they farm on a potato field which has for a long time been associated with potatoes.

There is an exclamation in the fifth stanza, which could be there because the poet feels he is letting down his predecessors. The line "Just like his old man" is a reminder that all his family stretching back a few generations were diggers. The poet seems to be using genuine admiration for his predecessors in their ability to work on the fields. This is the central point of the poem because it is a lot shorter than the other stanzas.

The poet has admiration for his grandfather too, because he tells us how good he was at digging for peat. The phrase "corked sloppily with paper" is a contrast to the precision of the digging his predecessors did and perhaps tells us why the poet did not want to dig because he felt he was not as good as them because he was not as precise. It says that his grandfather was very focused on digging because he would just stop to have a drink and then would be back digging straight away. The words "nicking" and "slicing" show once again the precision of the digging and also that his grandfather only wanted to get the best peat by digging lower. It also tells us that he took a lot of pride in his work.

The penultimate stanza is back to the present tense and back to where the poem began. There is alliteration and onomatopoeia in "squelch and slap". It seems that certain sounds and sensations in this poem seem to be a memory triggers for the poet. The onomatopoeia adds extra effect to the description. The metaphor "through living roots awaken in my head" is telling us that the poet feels he is cutting through his family's roots by not digging. He is upset and seems to be very depressed that he is not following the family tradition in the line, "But I've no spade to follow men like them."

The last stanza starts off with the same lines as the first stanza as if to show at the poet is still in the same place still waiting to write his poem. This is called a circular structure and perhaps reminds us that the poem is actually about poetry rather than digging. The last line "I'll dig with it" seems more optimistic as if he will dig things out in his mind and then write them down with the pen. He thinks that he is now just as valuable as his ancestors are and that he is not a traitor who broke his family roots.