Analysis Of Blackberry Eating By Galway Kinnell

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Blackberry Eating, as a whole, is an extended metaphor. The speaker is literally describing their love for fresh blackberries, but they are really trying to convey their love of words. In the poem, Galway Kinnell uses musical devices such as alliteration, rhythm, and enjambment to convey this hidden meaning. Blackberry Eating is filled with alliteration, to the point that it almost becomes a tongue twister. Examples include “black blackberries”, “blackberries for breakfast”, “prickly, a penalty”, and “squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well in the silent, startled”. The alliteration is the main way that the speaker displays their love of words; they are demonstrating the way they love to manipulate and play with words, and how they have a large enough vocabulary to easily repeat the consonant sounds. When someone loves something and is passionate about it, they typically know very much about it, and that is the case with the speaker and words. They are extremely passionate about words, and therefore they enjoy simple word play in the form of alliteration. …show more content…

It can be incredibly hard to create a natural, almost musical rhythm with words, but it doesn’t seem to be a problem for the speaker. Because they are passionate about words, they easily manipulate them such that the words roll off the readers tongue. The author even hints at their intent of this effect in the poem, stating “the ripest berries fall almost unbidden to my tongue, as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words”. The speaker beautifully crafted their words into a rhythmic masterpiece that almost begs to be sang—it is difficult to read the poem out loud without singing the words due to the rhythm the author infused into the

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