Episode #044 Blackberry-Picking - Seamus Heaney

Connor and Jack go on a mid-summer romp in the blackberry patch for a discussion of Seamus Heaney's "Blackberry-Picking." Along the way they discuss the poem's accessibility to a variety of audiences, Heaney's ability to create sonically perfect moments, and the meaning of the word "crepuscular." They also take time to marvel at Heaney's overall mastery of all things poetic and the way he uses all of the tools in his poet's toolbox to make the poem both more complex and more easily understandable. More on Seamus Heaney, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/seamus-heaney More on Heaney's relationship to the Troubles, here: https://trinity.duke.edu/node/1637 The poem of Heaney's passed around online on the 20th Anniversary of the signing of the Good Friday accords, here: https://www.irishcentral.com/culture/good-friday-agreement-anniversary-seamus-heaney Find us on facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at [email protected]. Blackberry-Picking By: Seamus Heaney for Philip Hobsbaum Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. 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. Then red ones inked up and that hunger Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots. Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills We trekked and picked until the cans were full, Until the tinkling bottom had been covered With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's. We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre. But when the bath was filled we found a fur, A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache. The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. 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.

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