Blackberry Picking.

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Hasan Abdullah

English

Blackberry Picking

The poem Blackberry Picking is basically based on childhood memories of the summer days spent blackberry picking.  This poem is set in late August when the sunshine and rain of July have gone by and it going to soon approach fall, so it describes it as the right time.  The first stanza sets the scene of the poet’s childhood experience and the cheerfulness that the child feels in particular.  The word choice “glossy purple,” “its flesh was so sweet,” emphasises the child’s desire for these long awaited treasures.  The first stanza is in a relaxed tone detailing the initial build up of the ripening berries and the pleasure received once their taste was “leaving stains on their tongues.”  The word hunger in the end of the first stanza tells us that they were very anxious and just too happy, like they were dieing for it.  The gradual loss of excitement experienced in the second stanza is the continuation of the metaphor for the life and disappointments experienced.  The child tries to preserve the berries as “the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour” is an expression of the loss of innocence that the poet has as a child he experienced.  The theme of this poem is basically the idea of life as it grows and then eventually decays.  It’s the idea of the blackberry’s ripe, you eat them enjoy it, and they just decay away if you keep them for a long time.  The theme is of the poets childhood and how he enjoyed it and the way it ended.            

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        This poem isn’t very complex and is in fact rather simple words.  For example, “…a glossy purple knot…hard as a knot.”  The language used is quite simple, so we shouldn’t really have trouble understanding words as it isn’t very complex.  There aren’t that many metaphors compared to the number of similes in this poem.  There are many similes in this poem which are evenly spread out through the poem.  Here’s an example, “our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.”  There’s another one in the end of line four and at the beginning of line six.  The description of the berries in detail ...

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