In Seamus Heaney's "Blackberry Picking," a literal description of picking blackberries is conveyed through his use of diction, imagery, and metaphors, which then portrays a deeper understanding of the whole experience. Heaney's physically-intense language, vivid literal description, and profound, metaphoric use make the poem much more than a child's impression of a popular activity in the countryside. It helps to portray a deeper understanding of the intensity of a summer relationship between two young people.
             The diction Heaney uses has romantic and sexual connotations, that allow the reader to infere the deeper meaning of a summer romance. The ripening of the blackberries refers to the "ripening" of young love when the relationship has already started and the two young people fall in love. "You ate the first one. . . and had a lust for picking," makes reference to a summer romance once again. Just as a young child picks his first berry and can't stop picking them because of their tempting taste, a summer romance starts with one date and turns into the want for even more. Furthermore, Heaney uses words like "hunger" and "burned" to add to the sexual association. Young lovers have a hunger and a burning desire for one another just as children have for blackberries. As the poem comes to the end with the rotting of the blackberries, the relationship ends as well. The final line of the poem, "Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not," shows how children want the blackberries to last forever, but they know that they won't. This is symmetrical to the ending of a summer romance in that the young lovers know that the romance will end, yet they still want it to last forever.
             To bring this scene to life, Heaney uses lively and vivid imagery to describe the blackberry picking experience and his summer romance. "Summer's blood' is a violent personification to describe the juice of the berries, as...