A Poem Analysis Essay Example

Help for those in AP Literature and composition

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As the AP testing season is upon us, I figured I’d provide an example of a poetry essay I wrote this year for AP Lit. Is it a perfect essay? Heavens, no. However, hopefully, this might guide some people who might have forgotten how a poetry analysis essay is supposed to go. As always, this essay has been initially submitted to Turnitin.com so I do not suggest conducting any fishy business. Without further or due, an analysis of the poem “Blackberry Picking”.

The Warning of the Berries

Summer’s bounty is intoxicating with its assortments of lush delights and in Seamus Heaney’s poem “Blackberry-Picking” those beautiful fruits are described in full detail. Our speaker describes a magnificent journey in which a hunt for the first blackberries of the season occurs. The speaker fully invests themselves in the activity and greedily harvests as much as possible only to return to their stash to find it unsuitable for consumption. “Blackberry Picking” explores greed and impulse with a naive and youthful approach. Heaney utilizes imagery and metaphors to convey how unaware, hopeful, and impulsive the speaker is.

The first stanza describes the love and compassion for the action of blackberry picking with lush imagery. The author paints a vivid picture of blackberry picking with illuminating descriptors such as “wet grass bleached our boots” and “Our hands were peppered/ With thorn pricks…”. Both phrases present an accurate depiction of what the experience of blackberry picking is like with colorful language. The second stanza also holds some fantastic descriptions of fungi as “ a fur/ A rat-grey”; both are hilarious descriptions that call upon memories of the fungi that haunt the fruit of anyone’s kitchen. These are just a few examples of imagery in the poem because, in fact, the entirety of the poem reeks with other descriptions appealing to other senses.

One of the more influential elements of describing the process of blackberry picking, but also the theme of the poem, is Heaney’s use of metaphors and similes. Lines 6–9 describe the creation of greed and an insatiable hunger for blackberries using a combination of similes (“Like thickened wine”) and metaphors. These techniques present the attitude of the speaker, how infatuated and intoxicated they are towards the experience, making it all the more real. In the second stanza, a similar occurrence is seen. Heaney uses fungi as a metaphor for rivaling greed, the fungi and the speaker, and the consequences of greed. This presents a contrast, a naive speaker who thought time would stand still for their desires and a natural enemy who consumes solely to survive and populate. Sweet to sour and unusable, the grief that comes with taking too much from what you love, these are all aspects of blackberry picking in the eyes of Seamus Heaney.

I have another one of these in case the one didn't do the trick and I might eventually release that one, depends on how this one does. But, thank you for reading and spending some time going through this article. I hope this helps you. If you would like the other one a bit earlier comment below and I will bend easily to your demands.