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“Digging” Introduction
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"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.
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“Digging” Summary
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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.
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“Digging” Themes
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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
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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
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Digging”
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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.
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Lines 3-5
Under my window, ...
... I look down
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Lines 6-9
Till his straining ...
... he was digging. -
Lines 10-14
The coarse boot ...
... in our hands. -
Lines 15-18
By God, the ...
... on Toner’s bog. -
Lines 19-24
Once I carried ...
... good turf. Digging. -
Lines 25-28
The cold smell ...
... men like them. -
Lines 29-31
Between my finger ...
... dig with it.
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“Digging” Symbols
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Handheld tools
Handheld tools in the poem represent power and potential. Both spades (a.k.a. shovels) and pens are presented as important tools for labor—be it the manual labor of the speaker's father and grandfather, or the speaker's own labor of writing. The pen is the speaker's version of a spade, which is the poem's metaphorical way of saying that the speaker will use the pen just as his ancestors used their spades: to dig. But whereas the speaker's father and grandfather dug the earth to plant potatoes and find "good turf," the speaker will figuratively dig through his memories to inspire his writing. His digging involves remembering and honoring the values of his ancestors, and embodying those values even as his life's work ultimately follows a very different path.
It's also worth noting that there is, arguably one other tool in the poem: the gun of line 2, which is part of a simile the speaker uses to describe the feel of the pen in his hand. A gun is a weapon, of course, and its presence in the poem creates some tension. It suggests that the speaker has within him a great potential power, that writing itself is a weapon of sorts. Against what? Perhaps against time itself—against the loss of heritage and familial tradition. And indeed the speaker does have the ability to preserve his family's heritage in words (i.e., via poetry) if not in actions. To "fire" the gun, metaphorically, is to write—which, again, has already been compared to "digging." Both the speaker's writing and his forebear's manual labor, then, are equated with a powerful preservation of Irish heritage and identity.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 2: “pen,” “gun”
- Line 15: “spade”
- Line 30: “pen”
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“Digging” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Alliteration is used frequently in "Digging." The first example is in the first stanza:
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.Here, the alliteration is working alongside consonance and assonance to create a "snug" sounding stanza. That is, all the sounds themselves seem to fit perfectly together, just as the pen fits right in the speaker's hand (and the spade in his father's).
The second stanza also uses alliteration:
... a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look downThe alliteration here is used to convey the physical effort of digging a spade into the earth. The prominence of the alliterating syllables draws the reader's attention to speaking as a kind of physical effort, involving the muscles of the mouth (indeed, even reading silently involves some muscle movement too).
The fourth stanza uses alliteration to a similar effect:
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.Again, these syllables have a sort of firmness or toughness that mirrors the effort of digging. The plosive, air-stopping consonants—the /t/, /b/, and /p/—are followed by the breathy exhale of the /h/, evoking, via sound, the physical intensity of this work. It's also as though the speaker is himself digging into the language, bringing up crops of consonance.
Next up is the /d/ sound in lines 23 and 24. Here "down and down" alliterates with "Digging," linking these words together conceptually. That is, by digging, the person doing the digging goes further and further into the earth. This also carries the same meaning as in the previous two examples.
The greatest concentration of alliteration of saved for lines 25 and 26):
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edgeThe onomatopoeic quality of these lines is covered in the corresponding section of this guide. But it's worth noting how the numerous /s/ sounds seem to convey the dampness of the earth in which the speaker's father (and grandfather) would dig.
Where alliteration appears in the poem:- Line 1: “my,” “my”
- Line 2: “squat,” “snug”
- Line 3: “sound”
- Line 4: “spade sinks”
- Line 5: “digging,” “down”
- Line 8: “drills”
- Line 9: “digging”
- Line 12: “tall tops,” “buried the bright”
- Line 13: “potatoes,” “picked”
- Line 14: “hardness,” “hands”
- Line 22: “slicing,” “sods”
- Line 23: “down and down”
- Line 24: “Digging”
- Line 25: “smell”
- Lines 25-26: “squelch and slap / Of soggy”
- Line 26: “curt cuts”
- Line 28: “spade”
- Line 29: “my,” “my”
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Assonance
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Caesura
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Consonance
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End-Stopped Line
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Enjambment
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Extended Metaphor
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Onomatopoeia
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Repetition
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Simile
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“Digging” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Squat
- Snug
- Gravelly
- Rump
- Stooping
- Drills
- Coarse
- Lug
- Shaft
- Tall tops
- Spade
- Turf
- Toner's Bog
- Corked
- Sods
- Peat
- Curt
Squat-
(Location in poem: Line 2: “squat”; Line 30: “squat”)
Short and thick.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Digging”
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Form
"Digging" doesn't follow a conventional poetic form. Instead its eight stanzas vary in length, some as short as two lines, while the longest, the sixth, has eight lines. The first effect of this is visual—notice how the text actually looks on the page. Considering the poem's main metaphorical idea—that writing is a kind of labor, like digging—it's tempting to view the different chunks of text on the page as representing the clumps of earth upturned by a spade. Like clumps of earth, the stanzas are made out of the same material—language—but they come in all shapes and sizes.
The poem has a nearly circular form, starting and ending with almost identical stanzas. In between, the speaker goes deeper and deeper into his memory, conjuring an image of his father and then his grandfather—and finding inspiration in both figures. There is one difference between the first and last stanzas, however, and it's crucial. Having mentally revisited his forebears, the speaker resolves in the last stanza to "dig" with his pen (whereas the first stanza is an image of inaction). This shows the importance of the memories in giving the speaker a kind of model for how to proceed.
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Meter
"Digging" doesn't have a strict meter; it's written in free verse, reflecting the freely flowing memory of the speaker and the way one image will inspire another in his mind. That said, some lines do fall into an iambic pattern (da DUM). The first line, for example, scans perfectly as iambic tetrameter (meaning there are four poetic feet of unstressed-stressed syllables):
Between | my fin- | ger and | my thumb
The neatness of the sound here suggests the "snug" way in which the pen fits the speaker's hand—and how he has found his chosen craft.
The first two lines of the third stanza also use meter to great effect:
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years awayNotice how the stresses help convey a sense of physical effort, with great weight landing on "strain" and "Bends low." This reminds the reader of the physicality of manual labor, and helps build a picture of the father as a determined worker.
Interestingly, the final stanza is again fully iambic (though "pen" could be viewed as stressed too):
Between | my fin- | ger and | my thumb
The squat | pen rests.
I’ll dig | with it.The tight meter here could be read as a metaphor for poetry itself—that is, the speaker shows his commitment to his craft by intensifying the poetic sound of his words.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Digging" doesn't have a rhyme scheme, but it does use rhyme here and there. Both examples come at the beginning:
... my thumb
... a gun.... clean rasping sound
... gravelly ground:
... I look down"Thumb" and "gun" are slant rhymes based on vowel sound, while "sound" and "ground" rhyme fully. The first rhyming pair contribute to a highly patterned opening stanza, in terms of sound. This helps suggest the idea of "snugness"—the way in which the pen fits perfectly in the speaker's hand.
The next three rhymes have a more hypnotic effect, perhaps suggesting that the speaker is falling under a kind of spell of memory. These rhymes pull the speaker—and the reader—into the speaker's childhood, and it's here that the speaker finds inspiration in the figures of his father and grandfather.
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“Digging” Speaker
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The first-person speaker doesn't define who he is, but this is generally taken to be Heaney himself (indeed, that's how it comes across in Heaney's interviews about the poem). The poem opens with a picture of the speaker in a state of inaction, his pen hovering over the page. Already, the reader gets the impression that the speaker is a writer—or at least an aspiring writer.
This is important, because what follows could be interpreted as an invocation. An invocation is an address to deity or muse that asks for help in the following poetic composition (John Milton's "Sing heavenly muse" in Paradise Lost is a good example). This poem comes at the start of Heaney's first collection, Death of a Naturalist, and it's fair to say that the poem does work as a kind of mission statement, with the speaker committing to honor his forebears through dedication, hard work, and craftsmanship. Indeed, much of this collection draws on Heaney's own childhood memories, suggesting that, perhaps, it is the past that functions as Heaney's muse/deity. Either way, the speaker is inspired by his father and grandfather to "dig" with his pen—to write.
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“Digging” Setting
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The poem opens with the speaker at a desk, suggesting he's inside a room of some sort. He's sitting by a window, outside of which he can hear his elderly father working in the flowerbeds. This sound might be real or imaginary; either way, it prompts the speaker to delve into his memories—introducing a new setting to the poem. Here, he admires the way that his father and grandfather work the land—which is distinctly Irish because of the reference to "potatoes" and "turf."
In a sense, then, the poem takes place in the speaker's mind—but his memories are firmly rooted in the rural Irish landscape. Indeed, part of the poem's aim is to bring that world to life—through, for example, the onomatopoeic sounds in the penultimate stanza. Ultimately, the poem returns to the present, the final stanza almost identical to the first. Except this time, however, the speaker turns to the future—inspired by his father and grandfather, he resolves to write.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Digging”
Literary Context
Seamus Heaney was an Irish poet who lived from 1939 to 2013. Aside from W.B. Yeats, there is probably no other Irish writer whose work is read—and treasured—so widely. Heaney himself felt an affinity for poetry that used the poet's local environment as a kind of raw material; his early influences include Robert Frost, Patrick Kavanagh, and Ted Hughes.
This poem is the opening poem in Heaney's first collection, Death of a Naturalist, which is firmly rooted in Heaney's youthful—and local—experiences (e.g., scouring the countryside for fruit in "Blackberry-Picking," or learning about frogs at school in "Death of a Naturalist," the collection's title poem). Like those other poems, both language and memory are there to be mind—to be dug at—in order to cultivate poetry. On a separate note, Heaney's poem "Follower," like "Digging," explores the poet's relationship with his father, an Irish farmer.
Death of a Naturalist, published in 1966, was well received and helped Heaney gain international recognition. Some of the poems in this collection were workshopped in a group known as The Belfast Group, which at one time or another included other important Irish poets such as Paul Muldoon, Ciarán Carson, and Michael Longley. Heaney published numerous books of poetry throughout his life, as well as plays and translations. He was the recipient of literature's highest honor, the Nobel Prize, in 1995.
It's also worth noting that "Digging" could be interpreted as part of a literary tradition of opening poetic statements. That is, it can be read as an invocation, which is poetry that calls on gods or muses for help in poetic composition (at the start of a given work). Heaney's gods in this collection, as it were, are childhood, memory, family, and Ireland itself. John Milton's introduction to Paradise Lost is a classic example of an invocation.
Historical Context
Heaney was born and raised in Northern Ireland, growing up in a Catholic household in a society that was largely Protestant. Education was important to Heaney; his teachers encouraged his taste for literature at an early age before he went on to study the subject at Queen's University in Belfast. Indeed, Heaney said of his own early years that he lived "a buried life and [then] entered the realm of education."
"Digging" appears to be set in Heaney's early days of writing poetry, and his childhood memory. The most notable thing here is the way that the speaker breaks with a long-standing agricultural tradition by wanting to be a writer, rather than someone who works the land—he wants to dig for poetic material, not potatoes or turf.
The father and grandfather are typical of working class Irish folk of the era, sustaining themselves and their family through the cultivation of the land. Indeed, the importance of potatoes and turf in the Irish story can hardly be overstated. Potatoes grew well in Ireland and were a good source of nourishment for centuries if Irish people. Starting in 1845, Ireland was ravaged by the Great Famine—this was a period of starvation and disease brought about by the repeated failure of the potato crop (the potatoes were made inedible by an infection). Around a million people died during the years of the famine, and approximately another million emigrated (many of whom went to America).
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More “Digging” Resources
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External Resources
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Heaney Looking Back — Heaney reflects on his life and career shortly after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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Heaney's Life and Poetry — A valuable resource from the Poetry Foundation.
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Heaney in the Archive — Heaney reads and discusses some of his poems, including "Digging."
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Ireland and the Potato — An interesting article about the relationship between Ireland and its key crop.
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Heaney and Muldoon — Heaney interviewed by fellow Irish poet, Paul Muldoon.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Seamus Heaney
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