(THIS POST HAS SPOILERS FOR INFAMOUS LITERATURE/FILM(S))
I’m not sure if the entirety of our AP class has analyzed this particular poem with Mrs. Allyn but, just to be safe, here is Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney:
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.
For the AP exam (about which I still have some reservations due to not having asked the specifics yet) we’ve been analyzing poetry throughout the year but this new system of group analysis has actually put into a mood to actively participate in discussion instead of letting it and our entire class lead me along. It’s quite a nice change I suppose, and yet I still tend to put my foot in my mouth (as a turn of phrase) when I try to explain things clearly. Unfortunately for poor Mrs. Allyn, I was unable to communicate my personal interpretation of the poem at large and ended up just sort of giving a rushed hash of what I thought about it. It’s been gnawing at me, how poorly conceived my explanation was, and so I’ve decided to take another crack at it while utilizing a more skillful approach… at least I hope I can better decipher what just seems to be a frighteningly intense blur of images, words, etc., etc. in my mind.
So I mentioned on Wednesday that I likened the poem to Fight Club, more specifically Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, not the film version with Brad Pitt (although I’ve been in search for material that’s circulated the web that would lead me to watching the movie since I have yet to see it myself). I have no doubt however that the film version is just as gross, if not “grosser” than the book.
Speaking of which, Gross is just the terminology that explicates my connection from Blackberry-Picking to Fight Club. Both are intensely Gross in their physical intensity, the exact thing we were analyzing during our discussion of Seamus Heaney’s poem. There’s a kind of raw and vividly graphic reminder of bodily fluids when you read either the poem or the book, although of course the book does mention body parts and fluids all too often…if you’ve read the story or have seen the movie than you know what I’m speaking of and I’m hoping that, in your minds, you said ‘ew’ right as I did.
I mean, there’s gross and then there’s Gross.
Anyway it was that and the fact that Mrs. Allyn herself believed that the poem was a metaphor for the loss of virginity. With that in context, one can easily conjure up society’s turmoil when it comes to the very concept of virginity and think of anything from “if a woman loses her virginity she is automatically impure and a whore, thus she cannot hope to “keep” like the blackberries in the poem” to “sex is a disgusting human function and basically sullies everyone that participates or performs in sexual intercourse or any form thereof”. There are densely unfortunate implications with either of these statements and/or with the spectrum in between, but if I were to get into that now I would be unprepared and would probably let my emotions slip into things. That would ensure that this post become a dissertation of some sort, at least fifty pages long or so.
But getting right down to the topic, it was the bodily functions that really made the comparisons to this poem and Fight Club click for me. Heaney seems to mosey around the line between really vibrant descriptions that relate to the topic of blackberries and picking them and describing actual human lesions. For instance, with line 3: “At first, just one, a glossy purple clot” makes me automatically picture a large welt or bruise on the eye or skin. A few more specific, graphic instances include lines 5 and 15 and 16 . Line 5: “You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet” makes me think of two men getting into a scuffle because they want to, because ‘they’re men all raised by women” as the book describes, and they haven’t “been through a war” that would really make them masculine, so they fight. With Lines 15 – 16: “Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.” which only emphasizes that imagery. There’s plenty more, but I think I’ve taken up enough time making that point so I’ll move on to the next one.
Earlier I tried to communicate to Mrs. Allyn that I imagined the poem about mental illness which, granted, is a key factor of Fight Club. I thought of the narrator and his alter ego, Tyler while ruminating over how the poem begins with 16 lines and ends with half of that number. It was interesting to picture how, with the way that the poem begins with such hope and such a unique way of describing and putting things, even while examining something that seems so simple, this was a character study of Tyler. His misaimed fandom certainly paints him as an all-knowing someone whom you should idolize when in reality, as is clear by the last stanza of the poem that made me think of the narrator of Fight Club himself, it will only lead to the decay of the brain. Truly a mental illness to ravage the mind and make you realize that it’s wrong, wrong, wrong to believe in.
Infinitesimal 
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