Poetry Response for "Blackberry Eating"
R.C.
Kinnell's poem, "Blackberry Eating," is short and sweet (no pun intended). I noticed that it only had 14 lines and immediately checked to see if it followed any sonnet rules. It doesn't. It is one complex-compound sentence. However, the first part of the poem seems to focus on the actual eating of blackberries in the fall. With the poem set in September, images of the the end of summer/the birth of cold, harsh winter came to mind as well as my own love for the fall months. I wandered then if the rest of the poem would be about a dying experience or a happy experience. In the next lines and with a look back at the word "love" in the first line, it seems to me that the speaker is jovial about the experience of eating blackberries for breakfast. The speaker even interjects some humor with the idea that blackberry stalks are prickly because that have been cursed with knowledge they shouldn't have--the art of making blackberries. So, I deduced it would probably be a positive experience for both me and the speaker.
I also noticed that the poem starts shifting with the first end-stop mark, a semi-colon, in line 6. It now seems to be about words and their similarities to the blackberry fruit: "the ripest berries / fall...as words sometimes do." This comparison brings to mind other works I have read in which the poet tries to explain poetry within a poem--popular ars poetica works like Collins' "Introduction to Poetry" or Galvin's "Art Class." The speaker's impassioned, fanciful tone in "Blackberry Eating" suggests that words--their sounds, their parts, their uses--are as joyous to work with as eating scrumptious blackberries in September. A unique take on the ideal of precision word choice in poetry, I think.
Overall, the shortness of this poem does not belie the enormous feelings the speaker has for the creation of words. The sound devices in the poem--"s" and "b" alliteration and word repetition ("black", "icy", "word", "September")--heightens the connection the speaker has with the words he uses to create thought. Thus, the reader gains an insight into the speaker's experience that may very well enhance the reader's own experiences going forward.
R.C.
Kinnell's poem, "Blackberry Eating," is short and sweet (no pun intended). I noticed that it only had 14 lines and immediately checked to see if it followed any sonnet rules. It doesn't. It is one complex-compound sentence. However, the first part of the poem seems to focus on the actual eating of blackberries in the fall. With the poem set in September, images of the the end of summer/the birth of cold, harsh winter came to mind as well as my own love for the fall months. I wandered then if the rest of the poem would be about a dying experience or a happy experience. In the next lines and with a look back at the word "love" in the first line, it seems to me that the speaker is jovial about the experience of eating blackberries for breakfast. The speaker even interjects some humor with the idea that blackberry stalks are prickly because that have been cursed with knowledge they shouldn't have--the art of making blackberries. So, I deduced it would probably be a positive experience for both me and the speaker.
I also noticed that the poem starts shifting with the first end-stop mark, a semi-colon, in line 6. It now seems to be about words and their similarities to the blackberry fruit: "the ripest berries / fall...as words sometimes do." This comparison brings to mind other works I have read in which the poet tries to explain poetry within a poem--popular ars poetica works like Collins' "Introduction to Poetry" or Galvin's "Art Class." The speaker's impassioned, fanciful tone in "Blackberry Eating" suggests that words--their sounds, their parts, their uses--are as joyous to work with as eating scrumptious blackberries in September. A unique take on the ideal of precision word choice in poetry, I think.
Overall, the shortness of this poem does not belie the enormous feelings the speaker has for the creation of words. The sound devices in the poem--"s" and "b" alliteration and word repetition ("black", "icy", "word", "September")--heightens the connection the speaker has with the words he uses to create thought. Thus, the reader gains an insight into the speaker's experience that may very well enhance the reader's own experiences going forward.