Blackberrying

”Blackberrying” is a celebratory poem about motherhood. The mood of the poem in the first two verses is one of happiness and joyfulness. Towards the end of verse two and the whole of verse three there is a change in mood and the poem becomes kind of bleak. The word ‘blackberries’ is used several times in the opening of the poem. This is used to alliterate and place emphasis the importance of the object in the poem, which could maybe be a symbol of how Plath’s children were an important part of her life. The imagery used creates a feeling that the nothingness and the stop that the road comes to in the poem means death. Plath mentions ‘blood sisterhood’ which can be interpreted as in the ritual of becoming ‘Blood brothers’ when two people cut each other and rub the wounds together, though changed to the feminine form of ‘sisterhood’ relating to the blackberry bushes as a metaphor for the bond between mother and child.