Resource: Blackberry-Picking, by Seamus Heaney

The title "Blackberry-Picking" evokes images of sensuous fruit and the pleasurable—often ritualistic—act of harvesting them. But despite its passion for this summer delicacy, the poem begins with a straightforward sentence: "Late August, given heavy rain and sun/ For a full week, the blackberries would ripen." It isn't until line three, when the speaker makes the observation, "At first, just one, a glossy purple clot/ Among others, red, green, hard as a knot," that you get a sense of his experience with blackberries and his excitement as they transform from hard "knots" into sticky "clots."

These hints heighten the poem's tone and imagery. Using images of the body to capture the experience of eating berries, the speaker says, "You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet/ Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it/ Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for/ Picking." Like wine, the fruit intoxicates, lowering the speaker's inhibitions and making him want more.

A pronoun shift in line nine—from the anonymous "you" to a more intimate "us"—intensifies the power of the berries. Armed with "milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots," the speaker and his companion(s) labor until their containers are full and their joy has taken on a savage quality. The berries are now "dark blobs" that burn like "a plate of eyes," and the children's hands are "peppered/ With thorn pricks, [their] palms sticky as Bluebeard's." (The pirate Bluebeard was famous for killing his wives.)

In the second stanza, this euphoria ends. The shift comes when the speaker says they "hoarded the fresh berries in the byre," since the use of the word "byre"—a shed, but also a homonym for "bier," a support for a corpse or casket—foreshadows the fate of their haul. The innocent "hunger" of the children in stanza one is no match for the "rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache" as the berries spoil. The speaker realizes they would have lasted longer on the bush, but like the others he was overwhelmed by desire. In response to losing the berries, he 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." The imagery is no longer lush, but the rhyme—only the second fully rhyming couplet in a poem built on off-rhymes—connects back to that moment when the first berry ripened and we see the cycle in full: how each summer the speaker is seduced by blackberries, and how each summer he collects them only to see them spoil. Year after year, hope and desire let him forget the unfairness of time's passage, yet he must also face the sad knowledge that his harvest cannot be preserved.

Read a biography of the poet Seamus Heaney at the Poetry Foundation.

• Throughout the poem, Heaney calls the blackberries many things, whether directly or through comparisons. Track those different ways of seeing the berries. What are the connotations or implications of each? Why might they be presented in this order?
• There are many moments when sound contributes to "Blackberry-Picking." Find some of these instances—near rhymes, alliteration, consonance, etc.—and explain what they add to the poem. Since this specialized vocabulary may not be explained elsewhere, it might help to say, "Where do you see common sounds at the beginning or in the middle of words? How are these words related?"
• Word Analysis: "Glutting" means having or supplying more than needed, but it also sounds similar to gluttony and glutinous, or sticky. What is the effect of using this word in the poem? Choose another word that calls attention to itself and explain how its meaning expands the meaning of the poem.
• Many poets have written about harvests and seasons, and some even about blackberries! Compare this poem with one or more of the following:
• Sonnet 12, by William Shakespeare
• "To Autumn," by John Keats
• "Blackberrying," by Sylvia Plath
• "Meditation at Lagunitas," by Robert Hass
• "Blackberry Eating," by Galway Kinnell
• "Blackberries," by Yusef Komunyakaa
• "August," by Mary Oliver