Digging

Fiction | Poem | Adult

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“Digging” does not follow a specific form or meter, and the poem seems to actively resist form by eschewing consistent stanza and line lengths. The poem consists of 31 lines and eight stanzas, arranged in varying manners. There are two couplets, as well as several tercets, or stanzas arranged in groups of three lines, and quatrains. However, there also stanzas containing as many as eight lines. The layout of the poem is like that of spade-marked ground, mottled and inconsistent, strewn with patches of overturned soil.

While the form of “Digging” is purposefully variable, the meter also takes on a sporadic cadence. Parts of the lines are essentially iambic, with metrical feet consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. However, the iambic pattern is inconsistent and does not follow any established metrical rules. Instead, the iambic phrases used in the poem serve more to imitate a specific sound: the “squelch and slap” (Line 25) of the spade by lending the poem a beat that is occasionally steady, like the drum of a heart or steps in a march, but also uneven and occasionally off—the sound of people working with tools. Heaney also employs internal and end rhyme, specifically at the beginning and end of “Digging,” but there is no set rhyme scheme. Rather, the rhyme is used as another sound element to further the poem’s metaphorical work: “digging.”

Onomatopoeia

Heaney’s use of sound in “Digging” is onomatopoeic in nature, meaning that the words used imitate the sound they make. Although the poem does not follow a specific form or meter, Heaney relies on sound to propel the poem forward and further extend themes and metaphors. From the beginning of the poem, onomatopoeia is used in very particular ways to imitate the harsh sounds of “digging.” The metrical mark of the poem illustrates this, and so to does Heaney’s use of alliteration throughout the poem. The poem’s title “Digging” sets up from the beginning of the poem the rhetorical effect that Heaney is creating. The sounds in the poem, the alliterative properties, and even the words themselves are meant to onomatopoeically echo the action associated with the title.

Alliteration

From the very beginning of the poem, Heaney consistently employs alliteration, generally focusing on consonant letters. For example, in the second stanza, Heaney writes, “Under my window, a clean rasping sound /When the spade sinks into gravelly ground” (Lines 3-4). (The alliterated letters are bolded to show the repetition of letters and sounds.) The repetition of the -s and -g supports the rest of the sound play in Heaney’s poem; the -s rasps or sizzles, a bit like the “clean rasping sound” (Line 3) of the spade sliding along the ground in the previous line. The following hard -g sounds are meant to be the harsh rebuttal of the metal shovel slicing through earth. Similar sound structures are used throughout the poem, especially in the penultimate stanza: “the squelch and slap / Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge” (Lines 25-26). Again, the soft, hissing -s sound is followed up by the quick, harsh sound of the hard -c, emulating the movement of the spade. The -d sound also appears consistently throughout the poem, often alliterated to match the -d in “digging” and “down.”