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   mrs-campbell Teacher
   High School - 11th Grade

   eNotes Editor

   In the room provided, I can at least cover a couple techniques to get you started.

   1.  Personification, which is giving inanimate objects human-like qualities and actions. The sea wind "slapping its phantom laundry in my face".  Laundry is also a metaphor for the wind's smell, its moist warmth.  The hills "are too green and sweet to have tasted salt" is more personification.  Also, the waves "beating and beating at an intractable metal" (this phrase is also a simile; she says the waves are like a blacksmith).  The bird calls "protesting, protesting", flies that "believed in heaven."  The berries give her a "blood sisterhood; they must love me/They accomodate themselves". 

   2.  Imagery, which is using descriptive phrases to bring the 5 senses to life.  She uses great words to help us feel like we are there, experiencing her walk.  "A sea somewhere at the end of it, heaving" describes the full, rich sound of the ocean waves.  "Blackberries big as the ball of my thumb...fat with blue-red juices" is a great image of juicy, ripe blackberries.  The black birds overhead fly up in "cacophonous flocks-bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky".  Cacophonous is a great word to describe the startled squawking of a flock of birds, and to describe their image as burnt paper wheeling brings to mind perfectly that image.

   I hope those two can get you started!  Good luck!

   Sources:

   http://www.enotes.com/blackberrying/

   http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/blackberrying/

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   Posted by mrs-campbell on Friday January 9, 2009 at 7:45 PM