Metaphor and Imagery in Galway Kinnell's Poem, Blackberry Eating

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The Use of Metaphor and Imagery in Galway Kinnell's Poem, Blackberry Eating

Written in 1980, Galway Kinnell's Blackberry Eating is a poem which creates a strong metaphoric relationship between the tangible objects of blackberries, and the intangible objects of words. The speaker of the poem feels a strong attraction to the sensory characteristics (the touch, taste, and look) of blackberries. The attraction he feels at the beginning of the poem exclusively for blackberries is paralleled in the end by his appetite and attraction to words. The rush the speaker gets out of blackberry eating is paralleled to the enjoyment he finds in thinking about certain words; words which call up the same sensory images the blackberries embody.

Throughout the fourteen lines of the poem, the imagery of the blackberries, as well as the speaker's ardor for them is explored. In the final lines of the poem, the speaker reveals the connection between the imagery of the blackberries and the imagery that is created by words. The blackberries become the existing tangible reality of the way the speaker views words. The author savors the taste of the blackberries in his mouth in much the same way as he savors the sound of certain words on his tongue.

In the first line of the poem the speaker states his fondness for going out to eat blackberries. "I love to go out in late September..." This line makes it clear that the speaker goes out voluntarily because of his desire to eat the blackberries. In the next line, the speaker describes the blackberries in vivid imagery. "among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries. This description of the blackberries does not leave the reader to wonder about how the blackberries look or taste. The re...

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...he metaphor he has created between the two objects. This allusion is further strengthened in the last line of the poem when the writer says "of blackberry eating in late September." The ending of the poem now echoes the beginning. The poem has come full-circle and the correlation between the sensory experience of blackberry eating and the auditory pleasure of words has been made.

Blackberry Eating is metaphorical poem about the similarities between the pleasurable experience of picking and eating tasty blackberries and the auditory enjoyment of hearing the sound of certain words. Both the blackberries and the "words" provide a pleasurable sensory experience that the speaker collapses together and relates to in the same manner. Blackberry eating becomes a tangible experience that is used to depict the way the speaker intuitively reacts to certain words.

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