Digging (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Seamus Heaney
- First Published: 1966
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Memory, Parents and children, Farms, farmers, or farming, Fathers, Edible plants, Ireland or Irish people, Old age or elderly people, Aging, Potatoes
The Poem
“Digging” is a relatively short poem (thirty-one lines) in free verse. While it has no set pattern of doing so, it breaks up into stanzas of two to five lines. The presence in the poem of the first person “I” who wields a pen, and the family reminiscences, identify the speaker as Seamus Heaney himself and the poem as autobiographical. The poem is filled with the terminology of Heaney’s native Ireland.
Heaney begins the poem with an image of himself, pen in hand. He hears or is remembering the sound of digging under his window. It is his “father,...
[The entire page is 1520 words long]
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