"Digging"
“Digging” by Seamus Heaney is the first poem in the first full volume of Heaney’s poems, “Death of a Naturalist”. “Death of a Naturalist” is about the transition into adulthood and the loss of innocence. The poem shows how Heaney looked up to his father and grandfather, especially their hard work. Even though Heaney did not follow in their footsteps and become a farm laborer, he respects the work they do, especially their skill at digging.
The poem is a free verse poem. It has eight stanzas with two couplets. It rhymes occasionally, but it does not have a patterned rhyme. The first two lines rhyme with “thumb” and “gun”, the second stanza also has some rhyming words. The poem is a first person narrative; this is evident from the first line that uses the word “my” and other lines throughout that use words such as “I” and “we”. The title relates to the poem because all three generations mentioned are digging. His father dug potato drills and flowerbeds, his grandpa used to dig peat, and he is digging up the past. Because of this, the title is very fitting.
Throughout the poem Seamus Heaney uses shifts in the tense to convey his memories as well as his determination for the future. It starts off in present tense as he sees his father struggling with the flowerbed. The poem then shifts to past in order to recall his grandfather’s work digging peat and his father’s stronger days digging potato drills. The poem returns to present tense during the last two stanzas. The final line is future tense in order to show that Seamus understands that his work is writing.
The first stanza of the poem says the pen in his hand fits “snug as a gun” (line 2. The second stanza is Heaney looking down from is window to s...
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...” as they fill the bucket. Another shift occurs in the second stanza when the speaker says they “hoarded the fresh berries in the byre” (line 17). “Byre” means a shed, but it can also be a support for a casket or corpse. This foreshadows what is to come.
The berries begin to spoil because more were picked than could be eaten in time. The “rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache” (line 19) got to them. The berries would have lasted longer if they had been left on the bush, but desire and greed overwhelmed the speaker when picking the luscious berries. Because he lost the berries due to rotting, the speaker says, “I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair / That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. / Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not” (lines 22-24). The speaker collects berries every year, more berries than needed, and he always sees them go bad.
Both poems have been written about death dying and the loss of loved ones, in a once thriving Welsh mining community. The first poem by Mike Jenkins is a reflection and remembrance by a Father who tragically and suddenly lost his son in a horrific and unfortunate disaster that happened in Aberfan in 1966, where many young lives were lost.
The speaker connects all of his random images into the much bigger thought through the use of diction. Diction helps prepare the reader to understand that the speaker is having a moment where a past event is also being remembered. Hence the last words on the last stanza “Long had it been since my heart had been lifted as it was by the lifting scarf.” (Updike) the vibrant event explained through the poem helped the speaker remember that he had other moments in his life where his heart has been lifted just like that one event his describing.
Part I is particularly anecdotal, with many of the poems relating to the death of Trethewey’s mother. The first part begins with an epitaph from the traditional Wayfaring Stranger, which introduces the movement of the soul after death, and the journey towards the ‘home’ beyond. In “Graveyard Blues”, Trethewey examines the definition of “home” as a place of lament, in contrast to the comforting meaning in the epitaph beginning Part I, and the significance of the soul’s movement after death. The ‘home’ described in the epitaph is a place of comfort and familiarity, where the speaker returns to their mother. In contrast, Trethewey describes the ‘home’ she returns to after her mother’s death as a hollow place, the journey back to which is incredibly
As he slouches in bed, a description of the bare trees and an old woman gathering coal are given to convey to the reader an idea of the times and the author's situation. "All groves are bare," and "unmarried women (are) sorting slate from arthracite." This image operates to tell the reader that it is a time of poverty, or a "yellow-bearded winter of depression." No one in the town has much to live for during this time. "Cold trees" along with deadness, through the image of "graves," help illustrate the author's impression of winter. Wright seems to be hibernating from this hard time of winter, "dreaming of green butterflies searching for diamonds in coal seams." This conveys a more colorful and happy image showing what he wishes was happening; however he knows that diamonds are not in coal seams and is brought back to the reality of winter. He talks of "hills of fresh graves" while dreaming, relating back to the reality of what is "beyond the streaked trees of (his) window," a dreary, povern-strucken, and cold winter.
The second stanza and third stanza tell how the woodchucks continue to destroy the garden because the cyanide gas was not successful. The speaker tells about the woodchucks taking over the vegetable patch and beheading the carrots. This drives the speaker crazy, therefore taking the violence to another level. The speaker pulls out a gun and puts the ...
Heaney’s “Death of a Naturalist” talks of a moment in Heaney’s childhood, however is metaphorical for aging and the loss of innocence. Heaney uses the first stanza to tell the reader of his memories of the flax dams as being somewhat wonderful by using colloquial language “Best of all was the warm thick slobber” to sound enthusiastic about that particular moment in time. The list of three “warm, thick slobber” is highly onomatopoeic, conseq...
The poem begins with the words Once upon a like a fairy tale beginning with Once upon a time. However, we get midnight dreary instead. An opening more reminiscent of a ghost story. He is reading a quaint and curious volume forgotten lore. Quaint and curious alludes to the lore being weird and mysterious. The fact that it is forgotten alludes to it being secret and unknown. Lore alludes to it being untrue.
The first stanza incorporates a lot of imagery and syntax. “A toad the power mower caught,”(line1). The use of syntax in the very first sentence is to catch the reader’s attention and to paint an image for them. The stanza goes on to talk about how the toad hobbles with it’s wounded leg to the edge of the garden, “Under the cineraria leaves”(line4). The speaker uses the word cineraria, which is similar to a cinerarium, a place where the ashes of the deceased are kept. By using this, the speaker further illustrates the death of the toad. “Low and final glade.”(Line6) this line is like a metaphor for the dying toad, the final rest for the toad could be the final glade. In the first stanza it seems as if the speaker is making fun of the dying toad saying the garden sanctuaries him as if he were a person. The opening line even seems a bit humorous to the reader. The following stanzas also have a tone of sarcasm.
In the second and last stanza of the poem we are reminded that he was but a child. The thought of losing the berries “always made him feel like crying” the thought of all that beauty gone so sour in the aftermath of lust. The lack of wisdom in younger years is emphasized by the common childish retort of “It wasn’t fair.” He kept up the childish hope that this time would be different, that this time the berries would keep and that the lust, work, and pain might not have been in vain, that others would not “glut” upon what he desired.
poem. It almost seems that the narrator is recalling the woman that was from his past and
“For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop.” The men hanging to wither and rot for no reason other than ignorance, greed and prejudice. “A strange and bitter crop.”
The diction Kenyon employs for her description of the poem’s physical and psychological setting serves as Kenyon’s primary means for presenting her argument regarding the nature of the mourning process and its failure to help those who have lost loved ones. The poem’s first stanza begins as follows, “Like primitives we buried the cat with his bowl. Bare-handed we scraped sand and gravel back into the hole(1-4).” The first two words, “like primitives,” give the reader immediate insight into Kenyon’s opinion regarding the nature of the burial itself. She sees it as a means of coming to grips with death that is less evolved than the mental state of those that it attempts to help. When the first stanza is interpreted as a whole, the reader is...
In “Home Burial,” Robert Frost uses language and imagery to show how differently a man and a women deal with grief. The poem not only describes the grief the two feel for the loss of their child but also the impending death of a marriage. Frost shows this by using a dramatic style set in New England.
The consistent pattern of metrical stresses in this stanza, along with the orderly rhyme scheme, and standard verse structure, reflect the mood of serenity, of humankind in harmony with Nature. It is a fine, hot day, `clear as fire', when the speaker comes to drink at the creek. Birdsong punctuates the still air, like the tinkling of broken glass. However, the term `frail' also suggests vulnerability in the presence of danger, and there are other intimations in this stanza of the drama that is about to unfold. Slithery sibilants, as in the words `glass', `grass' and `moss', hint at the existence of a Serpent in the Garden of Eden. As in a Greek tragedy, the intensity of expression in the poem invokes a proleptic tenseness, as yet unexplained.
The setting takes place in the daylight of the woods. I felt that Frost set the poem in the woods because it helps reader imagine trees, leaves, and bushes. Therefore readers know that the speaker is alone without any road signs or knowledge of any direction on which road to take. The “yellow wood”(1) means that its somewhere in the fall when the leaves are changing colors. The “yellow” brings out a beautiful image of the autumn to readers. The “yellow wood” means there is a continuous decision one makes in li...