8AEnglish2008-9

Step 1 Group

In your small groups add a comment that analyses the poem in terms of,

(a) Tone & mood

(b) Vocabulary & diction

(c) Rhythm

(d) Structure & form

(e) Rhyme

(f) Imagery

(g) Use of sound

(h) Voice

Step 2 Individual anaylsis

On your own blog, write an individual response to the poem. Try to use as much of the group analysis as you can. Copy and paste your blog post into the comments section of this class blog.

Digging

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests: snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft against the inside
knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
…
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

by Seamus Heaney

squat pen: The use of the word squat suggests a fat stubby fountain pen. The pen is thick enough to be held in Seamus Heaney’s farmer’s son’s hands.
rump : The lower back and backside. The strain comes from the heavy and repetitative work of digging.
shaft: That part of the spade which connects the handle at the top to the blade at the bottom.
peat/turf : Peat and turf share almost the same meaning. A sod of turf is a rectangular section of peat which is cut from the ground and used as fuel.