Analysis Of Blackberry Eating By Galway Kinnell

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Poetry is a way we express our emotions in a unique way today. Galway Kinnell was a great American poet. His writings are unique because they seem to shift to different subjects throughout the lines. The poems “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps” and “Blackberry Eating” are good examples of this. There are many devices used in both poems that help the reader analyze this writer’s message and what his intentions with the poems were. Galway Kinnell’s two poems, “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps” and “Blackberry Eating” can be compared through the devices theme, and tone. “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps” has a very interesting theme. The poem appears to be a story of two individuals enjoying their company which leads to something great. …show more content…

The speaker in “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps”, as I stated earlier appears to be a woman expressing her joy in the relationship, whereas in “Blackberry Eating” the speaker is a man, possibly Kinnell, who is explaining his passion for the blackberry fruit. Another comparison between these poems is that the themes change. Galway Kinnell seems to have a way of changing his elements in his poetry. The shift with the theme in these poems happens in the oddest places. The theme of “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps” and “Blackberry Eating” are good examples of this. In Kinnell’s “After Making Love We Hear Footsteps” poem, near the end, the speaker says, “and he appears – in his small pajamas, it happens” (line 12) and “and touch arms across his little, startlingly muscled body” (line 21). You see now that theme changes from love to enjoying time as a union, as a family. The speaker is expressing her gratitude for being able to birth a child and together they take pride in now being parents. In the blackberry poem it’s a little different the speaker goes from expressing his interest in blackberries, to describing what the taste is with very descriptive words. The speaker states, “like strengths or squinched lumps many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps which I squeeze” (lines 10-12). After reading these lines you can imagine the delicious taste of a blackberry in your

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