Poetry commentary on Seamus Heaney’s Blackberry-Picking
The smell of disappointment.
In the poem Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney the narrator is an adult remembering an element of his childhood of which he has mixed feelings. The poet conveys a literal description of picking blackberries in late August but also shows the reader the disappointments we have to face in our life and how to learn from them. Seamus Heaney uses rich language to awaken the reader’s senses and make them more aware of the world he is trying to portray.
In the first stanza of the poem the tone is one of innocence. The narrator tells the reader about the childhood excitement of picking berries and the thorn pricks they endured for the sweet flesh. There is also a reference to a children’s fairy tale when it says, “our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s”. Despite this it is obvious to the reader that the narrator is an adult. This is because of words such as wine, blood, lust and red, which provoke the idea of passion. “Summer’s blood was in it, leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for picking” are not words of a child but a more mature adult using his knowledge to describe a childhood experience.