I was attracted to this poem from the moment I read it. The eating of the blackberries just like writing poetry is a fascinating image. The descriptions are so rich and meaningful. The dark, cold blackberries are being consumed for breakfast in the late September. The richness of language is shown through the richness of eating blackberries.
"The ripest berries / fall almost unbidden to my tongue" - This particular image makes me think about the process of writing poetry, looking for the right words and expressions and suddenly the best words come to mind ("the ripest berries") and perfectly express the poetic emotion.
Kinnell uses the tangible objects to express the abstract. His process of squeezing, squinching open and splurging the blackberries is just like searching for the right word sounds, for the perfect combination of vowels and consonants in order to obtain a fuller tasting of the poetic experience. He nourishes the body with "eating blackberries" and he nourishes the art with writing the poetics.
I agree with the fact that Kinnell uses very vivid and meaningful imagery. Kinnell really does an excellent job on helping us understand the abstract. Such a simple and tangible process of eating blackberries clearly helped me understand how he feels about words.
ReplyDeleteI didn't use this poem in my blog but I did read the poem and I agree with what your saying. I really enjoyed the imagery, it was very vivid and bright, I could see the blackberries like they were right in front of me. I like how he took to different things such and food and words and described them in such of way as they were one in the same. He was able to use them to describe each other.
ReplyDeleteYou're on the mark here, in seeing the connection between language--the art of poetry--and the "nature-made" art of Blackberry making, and eating. We might say that the human and natural come together in the act of eating, and that the act of language reproduces that experience, but then exists on its own, as an object of poetic consumption, though never far from the physical, since words may be sounded, and it's in that physical presencing--the speaking and hearing-- of the word that, perhaps, language comes closest to nature....
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