Dec 28, 2009

Blackberrying | Introduction

According to Plath’s husband, poet Ted Hughes, “Blackberrying” was written in 1960 after the couple’s return to England and the birth of their daughter. It was not included in Plath’s 1960 collection Colossus, however, but was first published in 1971, in the posthumous volume Crossing the Water. With its long narrative lines, “Blackberrying” takes the reader on a journey from an external experience to an internal one. Immersed in the details of her blackberry-picking expedition, the speaker leads readers to an understanding of certain fears and foreboding without ever having to spell it out. Plath uses language and imagery in a very controlled way, leading the reader to see that every word has a possible double meaning and every image may bring to mind something internal, some inner working of the speaker. Plath has often been categorized as being a “confessional” poet who deals with painful personal experiences in her poetry; however, it is not necessary to view the speaker of this poem as Plath herself, even though it uses the first person point of view.

Blackberrying Summary

Lines 1–9
In this opening stanza, Plath’s speaker introduces readers to the scene and the task at hand— picking blackberries in a woods near the sea. In the first line she strongly establishes the isolation of the setting, emphasizing that “nobody” is in the lane and repeating the word “nothing.” Through the use of personification, Plath depicts the berries with human characteristics, as though “peopling” the scene with blackberries. They are associated with the speaker’s thumb, they are likened to eyes, and they “squander” their juices. By accumulating these details, Plath prepares the reader for an unusual but intriguing bond between the blackberries and the speaker: they have a “blood sisterhood” and the berries “love” her. In this stanza Plath also introduces the image of a hook, in the curves of the blackberry “alley” or lane. She also introduces the image of the sea, although as of yet it remains unseen (it is “somewhere at the end” of the lane). In the course of the poem Plath will develop these images as the speaker is “hooked,” drawn forward down the curving path to the mysterious (because unseen) and somewhat threatening sea.

Lines 10–18
In this stanza Plath expands the setting to include the sky and other living creatures—birds and flies. Choughs are dark birds, related to crows. They are presented here as vaguely ominous, sug- gestive of death. They are described as being “in black” rather than simply “black,” as though they are dressed in black clothing, as if in mourning. They are compared to “bits of burnt paper,” like ashes blown from a fire; and they caw in “protest” at some unnamed offense. Their noise seems to break the stillness of the scene—theirs is the “only voice.” Significantly, the black coloring of the birds recalls the blackness of the berries—and anticipates the blackness of the flies in line 15. In that line the speaker says of a bush of over-ripe blackberries that “it is a bush of flies,” suggesting both that the bush is filled with berries that look... » Complete Blackberrying Summary