I really enjoyed reading Digging by Seamus Heaney this week. I didn’t understand the first two lines (Between my finger and my thumb, the squat pen rests; snug as a gun) right off the bat, but I liked how they came into play at the end of the poem. Seamus clearly admired his father and grandfather even though they were different from him. “By God, the old man could handle a spade, just like his old man” (Heaney). Seamus depicts his father and grandfather as hard working, strong men. They dig through tough ground and lift heavy sod, so they can to plant potatoes. It seems like Seamus’s grandfather probably owned the farm previously, or worked in the same field, and passed on his skill set to his son. Seamus on the other hand is a writer and doesn’t make himself out to be as burly or impressive as the other men in his family. However, his positive sentiment, toward both his father and grandfather, suggests that they get along and respect each other even though they work in very different fields.
I thought his alteration to the last line was clever. “Between my finger and my thumb, the squat pen rests. I’ll dig with it”(Heaney). While his father and grandfather will continue literally digging into the earth, Seamus will be digging, intellectually, for poetry material and whatever else he thinks about. Also, Seamus’s keen observations about his father and grandfather’s work habits hint to him trying to emulate them. He just uses a pen instead of a spade.
I wondered about the first and last line myself. I like the imagery of the author holding the pen like a loaded gun, and then using it to fire out his poem, and resting it at the end. That's what I got out of the 'like a gun' allusion. I loved the transition from talking about his father to talking about his grandfather (which you allude to)! I often struggle with shifting the focus in stuff that I write, and I think he pulls it off pretty elegantly in those two lines.
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