In week nines reading the poem blackberry eating by Galway Kinnell stands out with its vivid imagery. The author enjoys the voyeuristic feeling of being herself alone amongst these sensual blackberries. You can tell because she describes them so avidly, so viscerally it’s almost like your there with her indulging in a peaceful mornings blackberry feast. “I love to go out in late September/among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries/to eat blackberries for breakfast.” It’s still warm but the air is getting cooler and the blackberries are icy with morning dew. Now she feels a welcoming atmosphere being here to chew on overripe blackberries. They are there for her enjoyment and she loves them. These blackberries are an art to her, majestic once in their own right and twice so in her interpretation. You can see this when she says the words she thinks to describe them: “strengths, squinched, squeeze and splurge. “like strengths or squinched,/any-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,/which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well.” You can tell by her emphasis on the blackberries being one syllable that she’s enveloped in their intricacies.
She connects her identity as a poet who’s fond of words to that of a blackberry eater. “Fall almost unbidden to my tongue,/as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words.” She finds something dark about eating blackberries in the morning silently by herself. The darkness is both in setting and in the art of the blackberries growth itself. They grow so sweet so unbidden and yet are lovely to enjoy. “Lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries/fall almost unbidden to my tongue.” She’s not just a voyeur, “in the silent, startled, icy, black language/of blackberry -- eating in late September” but also an enthusiast who truly appreciates the appeal of an icy, fat, overripe blackberry, a sentiment I empathize with but will now be able to especially engender next time I have blackberries with my yogurt.
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