Digging

(Norton 2819)

Introduction

The poem "Digging", is written as the poet's recollection of his own process of sitting down to write, and hearing his father digging in the garden. The sound of the spade sinking into the “gravelly ground” (L 4) brings back a flood of childhood memories of his father and his grandfather digging on the farm.

1st stanza
Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests: snug as a gun.
--- As a comparison, the first two lines of poem depict how the pen being the instrument of Heaney’s vocation fits as, (snug as a gun). Instead of the spade, this is the instrument with which Heaney will do his work, his ‘digging’

4th stanza
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
---- creates the feeling of the spade fitted his father well, nestling well under his boot and ‘firmly’ against his knee.

Line 14th
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
--- The sense of working and living on a farm is depicted in Heaney’s imagery, for example, the sensation of touch of the new potatoes.

5th Stanza
By God, the old man could handle a spade.Just like his old man.
--- portrays his father and his grandfather is as men who were born to dig.

6th Stanza
Once I carried him milk in a bottle Corked sloppily with paper.

--- The author uses the paper to contain the milk for his grandfather who is hard at work in the field. He corks it sloppily meaning that it could possible spill and is wasted.

7th Stanza
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.
--- the very viscous digging sounds and earthly smells he depicted.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.
--- illustrates the main underlying theme of the poem, Heaney’s need to follow his own vocation as a writer.

Last Line
I'll dig with it.
--- the poem is not just about author’s desire to follow his imagery, his pen is digging the language that will depict his father and his grandfather in words as, opposed to digging ‘turf’.

Analysis

The repetition of the long “ou” in sound, ground, and down
--- creates a sense of repetition of sound and movement, like the relentless action of digging.

Alliteration

---‘spade sinks’--- with the S’s being onomatopoeic the sound of the mental shovel sliding through the ‘gravelly ground’.
There is nest ‘Nicking and slicing’ and ‘heaving’ of sods, as Heaney would be writing and writing in search of the good language and expression.