Thursday Blog Assignment

In the poem "Digging" by Seamus Heaney it seems that the pen is both symbol and metaphor. The pen is symbolic of the tools used by the speaker's Irish forefathers. The writer uses his pen in the same way that his father used his spade to dig for the "good turf." Of the three types of symbols mentioned in the introduction I think the pen fits best in the conventional category. A pen itself is a contrivance and therefore would not be a universal symbol. A pen is not "drawn from the natural world that every culture experiences." For instance, if you presented a pen to an aboriginal culture they probably would not regard it as a tool of great importance. However, in western thought the pen is "mightier than the sword" and as the speaker of this poem asserts, as useful as the spade. For us the pen carries connotations of power and influence. The pen is not merely a literary symbol specific to this poem, because in Western culture the pen is understood to have a specific meaning as a source of useful creation. The pen is also a metaphor in that the speaker is comparing the usefulness of the pen to the usefulness of the spade. In the same way that an irish farmer would harvest peat and potatoes from the soil, a writer can harvest insight and influence from the blank page.

In the poem "Acquainted with the Night" by Robert Frost there is an interesting rhyme scheme. The four, three line stanzas carry a structured rhyme scheme. The stanzas can be broken down like this: ABA BCB CDC DAD and finally the rhyming couplet of AA. What's different about this scheme is how one rhyme is carried from the preceding stanza and then disappears in the following stanza. This scheme serves to tie the stanzas together in a rather seamless way. This scheme helps maintain a steady rhythm. I think this poem is impressive because of how Frost uses rhyme scheme to strengthen the poem, rather than distract from it's content.