Summary

"Digging" opens Seamus Heaney's first collection and declares his intention as a

poet. The poem begins with the speaker, who looks upon himself, his pen posed
upon his paper, as he listens to the noise of his father digging outside the
window. The speaker looks down, both away from and at his father, and describes
a slip in time; his father remains where he is, but the poem slips twenty years into
the past, indicating the length of his father's career as a farmer. The speaker
emphasizes the continuity of his father's movement, and the moment shifts out
of the present tense and into the past.
The speaker then changes his focus to his father's tools, saying, "The coarse boot
nestled on the lug, the shaft/Against the inside knee was levered firmly." These
lines, describing how his father's shovel fits against his boot and leg, echo the
first lines of the poem, which describe the speaker's fingers around his pen. The
speaker then describes the picking of the potatoes using the pronoun "we,"
indicating that other characters populate this memory; possibly this refers to
Heaney's siblings or his family in general. The tone is reverential toward the
potatoes and the work.

The poem then breaks back into couplet form: "By God, the old man could
handle a spade./Just like his old man." This part of the poem feels less formal
than the lines that come before it, more like something a person might say out
loud to another. The speaker commits personally his story with an oath ("By
God"), emphasizing his personal connection to rural Ireland.

In the next lines of the poem, the speaker describes his grandfather as a strong
digger who dug for fuel. He recalls approaching his grandfather with a bottle of
milk as a child; his grandfather downed the milk and returned to work with more
vigor than ever. This moment clearly still stands out to the speaker as an example
of his grandfather's hard work and skill. The language here is precise and mimics
the sound of digging in its bobbing rhythm and with phrases like "nicking and
slicing" and "going down and down."

The next stanza continues the evocative language and uses alliteration freely.
"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 speaker says,
explaining the impact his rural upbringing had on him. He ends the stanza by
saying he has no spade to follow men like his father and grandfather.
The final stanza, however, returns to the pen mentioned in the first, replacing the
spade with the pen in the speaker's hands. "I'll dig with it," is the final line of the
poem; this vow feels directed at the speaker's family, like a promise to follow in
its stead, though in his own way.

Analysis
The first couplet of "Digging" begins by using iambic pentameter and a rhyme.
The iambic pentameter, however, is interrupted by the trochee in "snug as," and
the following stanza does not follow the couplet form as the first one does.
However, the three lines of this stanza all rhyme; Heaney rhymes "sound,"
"ground," and "down." The simple, monosyllabic rhymes used in this and the
preceding stanzas appear to create the blueprint for the rest of the poem to
follow, but Heaney chooses to move away from those rhymes mid-poem, as if
their purpose has been served. Since the poem deals with the complex feelings
that arise when one breaks from tradition, this choice bears some significance.

The speaker ends the second stanza and begins the third with the line, "I look
down/Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds/Bends low, comes up twenty
years away." This stanza communicates the continuity of the speaker's father's
digging, but while in the present he digs in flowerbeds, in the past he was
digging amongst potato drills. The goal of digging has changed, but the action
itself has not. To make clear the journey we have made through time, the speaker
switches mid-sentence into the past tense.

The following stanza is clearly rooted in the past. The first sentence describes the
speaker's father's body interacting with the spade, but the speaker's voice
distances the body from the father, treating it as an extension of the shovel. "The
coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft/Against the inside knee was levered
firmly," the speaker says. By calling his father's boot and knee "the coarse boot"
and "the inside knee," instead of connecting them directly to his father, the
speaker suggests how intrinsic the act of digging is to his father's nature. Since
we the readers know that the speaker is comparing his father's work as a farmer
to his own work as a writer, we can conclude with some certainty that the speaker
is thinking of how intrinsic his own trade is to himself.

Other characters, though unnamed, also appear in this third stanza. "He rooted
out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep/To scatter new potatoes that we
picked,/Loving their cool hardness in our hands." Though the speaker never says
who the other people referred to by the first-person plural are, the wistful tone of
this sentence suggests that the "we" refers to the speaker and his siblings. The
wonder the speaker describes that stems from touching the potatoes comes off
as nostalgic and childlike; clearly, the speaker feels a deep personal connection to
farming, a connection that stems from his own experiences, not just those of his
father and grandfather.

The following stanza returns to the couplet format, though not to the rhymes, of
the first stanza. The speaker begins by uttering, "By God," a moment notably
more colloquial than the first several stanzas. This expression seems to burst from
the speaker naturally, suggesting that he truly feels impressed by his father's and
grandfather's skill.

By bringing his grandfather into the poem, the speaker makes clear that he is
talking about something beyond just the dichotomy between his own career and
his father's. He appears to celebrate the way of life that his father and
grandfather, to an extent, shared, and the nostalgia represented in this poem
suggests that the speaker's feelings toward his career as a writer are not cut-and-
dry.

The next stanza is longer than any of those that come before it, and it works to
describe the speaker's grandfather. The speaker asserts that his grandfather cut
"more turf in a day/Than any other man on Toner’s bog." Though the speaker is
very firm in his characterization of his grandfather, this assertion has a slightly
childlike tone, suggesting that the speaker still sees his father and grandfather
through the adoring eyes of a child. Furthermore, the speaker's grandfather dug
for turf, a source of fuel, while the speaker's father dug for potatoes. The speaker
then outlines a day when he brought his grandfather "milk in a bottle/Corked
sloppily with paper." This image evokes the pastoral landscape in which the
speaker grew up.

The stanza ends with the lines, "He straightened up/To drink it, then fell to right
away/Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods/Over his shoulder, going down and
down/For the good turf. Digging." The language here moves rhythmically and
smoothly for a number of lines, mimicking the movement of digging.
This stanza also quietly revives rhyme in the poem. The lines "My grandfather cut
more turf in a day/Than any other man on Toner’s bog" rhyme with the lines "To
drink it, then fell to right away/Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods" with
several lines that do not rhyme between and around them. Why the speaker
returns to rhyme is not entirely clear, but the return reminds the reader of the
speaker's specific line of work, as a poet.

By separating the word "Digging" into its own sentence, the speaker makes the
action a mythical gesture. Digging is beyond his own reach, it seems, so to an
extent he idealizes it. However, he seems to believe that he can reach the same
transcendental place through his own hard work as his forbearers did through
theirs.

The next stanza, the second to last stanza in the poem, reads, "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 speaker, using lots of
alliteration to evoke the sounds and smells he associates with digging, winds
through those sensations and, at nearly its end, pulls the reader back into the
present tense, paralleling how those sensations bring the speaker back to the
past. "But I’ve no spade to follow men like them," he continues. This moment
could indicate a disheartening direction, but the speaker does not take any time
to consider the merits of writing as a skill versus the merits of digging. He seems
to consider them absolutely equal.

Those "living roots" could be interpreted as a metaphorical reference to the

speaker family, his living roots. Of course, he describes them to describe how
they are cut through; this, appropriately, seems like a reference to the speaker's
choice to move away from the farming occupation.

The final stanza begins by repeating the first stanza exactly: "Between my finger
and my thumb/The squat pen rests." But instead of comparing the pen to a gun,
this time he simply says, "I'll dig with it." One important part of this image is that
he says he will use his own tools, his pen, to dig; his point is not that digging is
meaningful when it is like writing, but that writing is meaningful when it is like
digging. Both actions are sacred to the speaker.
Digging Summary & Analysis

"Digging" is one of the most widely known poems by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney and serves
as the opening poem of Heaney's debut 1966 poetry collection, Death of a Naturalist. It begins
with the speaker hovering over a blank page with a pen, preparing to write. The speaker then
reflects on the work ethic and skill of his father and grandfather, both of whom worked the land
as farmers. Though the speaker is breaking with that specific familial tradition, the speaker
presents writing as its own kind of labor, with speaker vowing to "dig" with the pen.

 Read the full text of “Digging”

 “Digging” Summary
o I hold a short pen between my fingers, where it fits tightly, like a gun.

Outside my window I hear the clear sound of a shovel working the pebbly
earth. It's my father out there, digging.

Looking down, I see my father straining as he bends low to tend to the

flowerbeds. When he comes back up, I think of him twenty years in the past,
bending down in a steady rhythm to dig in the neat rows of potatoes.

His booted leg is placed sturdily and comfortably on the shovel, the shaft of
which is secured against the inside of his knee. He pulls potatoes up from the
ground, and then digs deeply into the ground again. This time he's replanting all
the potatoes that we'd help him pick. We loved feeling how hard and cool they
felt in our hands.

My God, my old man was incredible with a shovel. So was his father.

No one could beat my grandfather when it came to cutting turf on the swampy
land that he worked. I remember once bringing him milk in a bottle, which I'd
sealed messily by using some crumpled up paper as a cork. He stood up straight
 and drank it all, and then got back to his work right away. He cut neat slices in the
turf, throwing the heavy surplus earth over his shoulder, digging deeper and
deeper to get to the best stuff.

I remember the chilly smell of the potato mould and the squishing sound of the
wet earth. Those memories are still alive in my mind. Unlike my father and
grandfather, though, my labor doesn't involve a shovel.

I hold a short pen between my fingers. It's my tool—this is what I'll dig with.

 “Digging” Themes

Labor and Craft

Most simply, “Digging” is a poem about work. As the speaker, a writer, holds a
pen in one hand, he hears his father, a former farmer, working the ground outside.
The speaker admires his father for his determination to work tirelessly and the
skill with which he uses a spade. Though the speaker metaphorically digs
for words rather than into the earth, he still draws inspiration from the work ethic
and expertise of his father (and grandfather). The poem, then, elevates manual
labor by imbuing it with a sense of craft and artistry, while also insisting on the
act of writing itself as a kind of work.

In the opening of “Digging,” the speaker is poised to start writing, his pen
hovering above the page. But when he hears the sound of his father digging in the
flowerbeds beneath the speaker's window, it brings back memories of his father
digging potatoes many years before. Though to some people digging might seem
like a pretty dull and repetitive task, the speaker presents it as a kind of artistry.
He focuses admiringly in minute detail on his father’s technique, while also
acknowledging the physical difficulty of the work.

Digging is presented as a complex and technical process, one involving neat

"potato drills" (the rows of potatoes in the ground), the strength to send a shovel
deep into the earth again and again, and the knowledge of how and when to
scatter crops. "By God, the old man could handle a spade," the speaker says,
emphasizing the expertise required of his father's labor.

Thinking about all this prompts the speaker to reflect on his grandfather too. Like
the speaker’s father, the older man provides an example of how best to approach
work: through determination and skill. The speaker recounts how he once took
some milk to his grandfather while he was digging—the grandfather drank the
milk and got straight back to work, demonstrating his total commitment to the job
at hand. Through the memory of these two men, then, the poem shows
appreciation for dedication and effort—seeing the physical act of digging as an
inspiration for writing poetry.

That’s why the first and last stanzas are very different, even though they are
almost identical on first look. Both focus on the same image—the speaker holding
a pen above a page—but it’s in the final stanza when he resolves to actually write.
Except he doesn’t say “write”; he says “dig.” His father and grandfather provide a
model for a way for the speaker to approach his work. And though the two types
of work—manual and imaginative—are very different, writing is presented as its
own kind of labor—one that that, though it may not require blood, sweat, and
tears, certainly requires commitment and effort.
Where this theme appears in the poem:

 Lines 1-2

 Lines 6-9

 Lines 10-14

 Lines 15-16

 Lines 17-24
  Line 28

 Lines 29-31

Family and Tradition

“Digging” explores the relationship between three generations: the speaker, his
father, and the speaker’s grandfather. The speaker lives a very different life to his
forebears—he’s a writer, whereas his father and grandfather were farmers. But
even though he isn’t a digger of the earth, the speaker realizes that he can still
honor his heritage by embracing the values of his elders. The speaker’s life and
art are shaped by his history, and in that history he sees a model for how to
approach his own craft. In doing so, the poem argues, the speaker is in fact paying
tribute to his father and grandfather. One doesn't have to follow in their ancestors'
footsteps exactly to honor and preserve their heritage.

The speaker’s father worked the earth, just like his father before him. Both men
used a spade skillfully and were engaged in tough manual labor.
Between those two men, then, there’s an obvious sense of continuity, of skills and
heritage being passed down from one generation to the next. The speaker,
however, represents a break with this tradition. Though he remembers the
“squelch and slap” of “soggy earth” and the “cold smell of potato mould,” he
either can’t or doesn’t want to follow his elders into the same kind of work.
Instead, he is a writer—something that, on the surface at least, is about as far
removed from physical labor as is possible.

The speaker acknowledges this—he knows he has “no spade to follow men like
them.” But just because he is breaking with tradition in a literal sense, in another
way he resolves to embody the values of that tradition. Hard work, grit,
concentration, persistence—all of these are traits that the father and grandfather
figures have taught to the speaker, who can now use them in his own way. This
shows that the speaker is a part of his family tradition, just in a different way, and
 also demonstrates that the people someone grows up with can have a huge impact
on how they see the world in later life (even if they led very different lives).

Accordingly, the poem ends on a plain-sounding expression of the speaker’s

intent: “The squat pen rests. / I’ll dig with it.” Just as the speaker’s father and
grandfather approached their work with diligence, the speaker will do the same in
his writing. The use of “dig” as the main verb here makes it clear that the lessons
the speaker learned from his father and grandfather will have a great role to play
in what is to come—ensuring that tradition, in one way or another, is honored.
Where this theme appears in the poem:

 Lines 3-31

 Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Digging”

o Lines 1-2

Between my finger ...

... as a gun.
The poem opens with an image of the speaker poised over a page, about to start
writing. A pen "rests" between his fingers, implying that he is quite comfortable
with writing; at the same time, this pen is "snug as a gun." This unusual simile in
line 2, introduced after the caesura's brief "rest," introduces a sense of tension.
Guns, of course, do fit well in the hand, and their use, equally obviously, has
serious consequences. Perhaps, then, this is subtly arguing that literature has
tangible consequences too, and that the writer therefore occupies a position of
responsibility.

For now, though, nothing is happening. This is a moment of quiet before activity,
suggesting that what follows is partly a meditation on the act of writing itself.
That is, the speaker is taking a moment to think about something before he
actually puts pen to page. This allows for the introduction in the following stanza
of the outside "digging" sound, which will offer another type of work to which the
speaker can compare his own.
 In part, "Digging" is about being true and committed to what you do—to working
hard. Everything about these opening two lines suggests the close relationship
between the speaker and his craft. These lines are packed full
of alliteration, consonance, and assonance, as though every syllable has been
carefully selected by a master craftsman (which, in fact, is true!):

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
The way in which every sound seems to fit with another (/ee/, /eh/, /uh/, /t/, /m/,
/n/, /s/, /g/, /t/, and /th/ sounds all repeat in just two lines!) suggests the way that
the pen fits perfectly in the speaker's hand, almost as if writing was what he was
born to do. This anticipates the speaker's admiration for his father's ability to
"handle a spade" in line 15—both men have a close relationship with their
respective tool.

Digging by Seamus Heaney

Here is an analysis of the poem ‘Digging’  by Seamus Heaney. Heaney was an
Irish playwright, poet, and academic; he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1995. Heaney’s career was both prolific and successful. In 1966, he published
his first major work, Death of a Naturalist, in which this poem is included.
Three years later, he published his second volume of poetry, Door into the
Dark. By this time, Heaney was already receiving critic acclaim for his writing,
and a slew of academic lectures followed. While many of his poems can be
construed as being political in nature, the majority of his poems fall under the
category of naturalism; many of the images in his poem are taken from his
surroundings in Northern Ireland. Heaney died on August 30, 2013, after a
short illness.

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Summary
This poem is autobiographical in nature. The speaker, presumably Heaney, is
sitting at his writing desk, preparing to write, when he hears his father working
in the garden outside. This conjures memories of the speaker as a young boy,
listening and watching as his father digs in the potato garden. The speaker
marvels at how well his father digs, which conjures an even older memory of
his grandfather, his father’s father, completing the arduous task of digging
through peat moss. Toward the end of the poem, the speaker writes as though
he can smell the potatoes from the garden and the peat moss his grandfather
has dug. He confesses that he does not have a spade like the two generations
before him, but he does have a pen which he will use to “dig.”

Analysis of Digging
The poem, which can be read in full here, is comprised of eight stanzas of
varying length. There is no set rhyme scheme, though some of the lines
do rhyme.
 

Stanza One
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

The first stanza contains only two lines. The speaker is focusing on the pen in
his hand. Heaney utilizes a simile, telling the reader the pen rests “snug as a
gun.” The reference to a gun is no coincidence: Heaney expects the reader to
infer that the pen is his instrument, his weapon. This idea will repeat itself in
the last stanza of the poem.

Stanza Two
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
(…)
My father, digging. I look down

In the second stanza, the speaker hears the sound of his father’s garden spade
sinking “into gravelly ground.” He gazes down at his father while he works in
the garden. There is no punctuation at the end of the last line in stanza two,
the thought is continued into the third stanza.

Stanza Three
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
(…)
Where he was digging.

Heaney utilizes a flashback quite cleverly in the third stanza. The speaker is

suddenly transported to twenty years ago, watching his father complete the
same task.

Stanza Four
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
(…)
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

The fourth stanza is rich in description, as the speaker paints the image of his
father digging through the potato beds.

Stanza Five
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

The fifth stanza is comprised of just two simple lines as the speaker marvels at
his father. The reader is then transported even further through time as the
speaker then conjures images of his grandfather performing a similar task.

Stanza Six
My grandfather cut more turf in a day
(…)
For the good turf. Digging.

The eight lines contained in the sixth stanza are the longest in the poem. The
first two lines read:

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Here, the reader gets a glimpse into the setting of the poem. In Ireland, peat
moss has been used as an alternative to coal. Cutting turf is an incredibly
grueling task and the fact that Heaney claims his grandfather could cut more
than any other man signifies not only the physical strength of his grandfather,
but Heaney’s own admiration for the hard work his grandfather was able to do
by himself.

He then shares an anecdote with his reader as he describes encountering his

grandfather out on the bog one day. The speaker describes a day when he
brought a bottle of milk to his grandfather. Heaney’s grandfather barely stops
his work, quickly drinking the milk and then returning to digging and cutting.

Stanza Seven
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
(…)
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
The seventh stanza returns the reader to the present day, as the speaker sits at
his writing desk.

The memories are so vivid and alive in the speaker that he can actually smell
the freshly dug potatoes and the “soggy peat”. He can hear the sound the
peat made as it was cut. The speaker realizes that unlike his father and
grandfather, he has no spade to follow in their footsteps.

Stanza Eight
Between my finger and my thumb
(…)
I’ll dig with it.

What he does have, however, is revealed in the eighth and final stanza, which
contains only three lines. Much is contained in these three simple lines. First,
Heaney uses repetition, as once again, he describes holding his pen between
his finger and thumb.

Heaney’s diction here is also curious, as he uses the word “squat” to describe
his instrument. While it can describe the physical appearance of the pen
itself, Heaney could also be showing the connection between himself and his
father and grandfather, both of whom would have to squat in order to
properly dig for the potatoes and peat moss. The last line, “I’ll dig with it,”
signifies that while Heaney realizes his instrument is different from previous
generations, he is still completing an arduous task. While his father and
grandfather dug for potatoes and moss, he is digging for the right word,
constantly attempting to create sustenance through his words.

Historical Significance
While this poem certainly is not political in nature, it does give a glimpse into
the lives of hardworking Irishmen. In previous generations, men had to dig for
both food and fuel. Because Ireland does not have a wealth of coal, men often
had to dig through the bogs to acquire enough peat moss that could be
burned as an alternative means of fuel.