Digging

Heaney begins and ends the poem by declaring that he holds his pen firmly, and he spends much of the poem describing the tools that his father and grandfather used to write; the comparison he draws between his occupations and theirs is clear. The whole poem works to prove that both kinds of work are valuable. However, his efforts, perhaps in part because they are so clear, risk falling a little flat. This poem portrays both writing and digging romantically. The poem glosses over issues that could complicate this poem's position; for example, the speaker does not discuss the class difference between writers/academics and farmers.

While Heaney was clearly a skilled writer at the time he wrote this poem, the poem can come across a little heavy-handed in how it expresses its goal to establish the speaker as a writer who somehow still follows in the footsteps of his farmer father and grandfather.