Explore the ways Heaney uses nature in the two peoms 'Blackberry Picking'and 'Death Of A Naturalist'.

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Explore the ways Heaney uses nature in the

the two peoms 'Blackberry Picking'

and 'Death Of A Naturalist'

Heaney sets the poem 'Blackberry Picking' in the countryside. You can tell this by the title of the peom and he also mentions 'hayfields, cornfields and potao-drills' in the first verse.

        Heaney uses a lot of alliteration in this poem. For example in the first verse he says 'big dark blobs burned'. There is a repetition of the b'b sound. This also makes the look of the berries more powerful. The reader gets a strong impression of their shape and colour. also he repeats the 'f' sound in the line 'The fruit fermented' which is in the second verse. This may give the effect, to the reader, of something slow. The word fermenting is a slow process.

        The imagery Heaney uses is concentrated in the first verse. For example, he says 'a glossy purple clot' and 'its flesh was sweet like thickened wine'. all of the metaphor and similie phrases convey stronhgs images of blood. At the beginning of the poem he makes the ripe berries out to be like young children- lots of 'blood' inside and then by the end of the poem he makes rthem out to be like older people. He says 'The fruit fermented' which shows decay and aging.

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        An interesting image he gives the reader is when he mentions Bluebeard. This is another of his many conections to blood but it is, by far, the strangest. Bluebeard was a pirate who killed many, many people. He was known to have 'sticky fingers'. Heaney links this story in well with the stickiness of blackberries.

        The idea I get from this poem is that Heaney is talking about the cycle of life. At frist he talks about the blackberries taking in nutrients of the environment and growing and ripening. at the start of the second verse he mentions 'A rat-grey ...

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