The Poem Blackberries by Yusef Komunyakaa - Essay Example

The poem Blackberries by Yusef Komunyakaa expands the traditional limitations of the Southern poetry by delving into the oft uncomfortable and sidelined issues of race and ethnicity, in a moving and thought-provoking manner, by resorting to a rich usage of imagery, symbolism and metaphor. The main character in the poem is a black boy who is required to collect blackberries from their thorny bushes, to eke out a living. Yet, at a symbolic level, the blackberries mentioned in the poem tend to have a very broad meaning and intent, which implicitly unravel the generally ignored and taken for granted racial realities and facets.

For Instance, at the very start of the poem the boy mentions that “They left my hands like a printer’s/ or thief’s before a police blotter/ & pulled me into early mornings (1-3).” At a superficial level, the black boy tends to decry the soiling of his hands while collecting blackberries, however at a deeper level this soiling tends to assume a larger meaning, perhaps alluding to the dehumanization and soiling of the social, economic and political prospects of an entire race, a race that has not avoided the historiography of its traditional dilemma like a “printer”, irrespective of being sidelined and marginalized like a convict or a “thief” (Aubert 119).

In that sense, the bewailing of the black boy brings to fore the pain and predicament of one’s race, thereby assuming a socially and ethnically pervasive meaning and intent. Hence, by doing so, on the one side the poet exposes the bestial predicament of a race and on the other side honors and consecrates its capacity for memory, identity and expression, thereby making it amply clear that the pain of the black boy is not something fateful, but the consequence of human injustice.  It does need to be mentioned that Yusef has resorted to a rich religious symbolism to stress on the pervasive and universal suffering and pain of the racial allusions associated with the black boy mentioned in the poem.

For instance, the lines in the very first stanza that are “The damp ground was consecrated/ Where they fell among a garland of thorns (5-6)”, though endow the poem with rich and commensurate imagery, also intentionally relate the suffering of the black boy to the suffering and agony of Jesus, which is catholic, universal and relates to the predicament of the entire humanity. This religious symbolism not only alleviates the suffering of the black boy and his race to superior moral dimensions, raising it beyond the ordinary and the mundane but also allows the humanity a familiar vantage point from which it could understand and empathize with the predicament of the boy (Salas 32).

Relating the pain of the black boy to the agony and passion of Christ, not only endows a mark of honor and respect to the pain ensuing from racial marginalization but also conveys that being marginalized does not divest a race of its essential human respect and dignity.  Yusef portrays the agony of the black boy on a larger canvass, which has the capacity to include within its ambit the black boy’s racial identity and the entire humanity. Also by choosing this pervasive canvass the poet is able to delineate the multiple dimensions and facets of racial prejudice.

At one time the black boy is shown to be picking blackberries and at other time he is depicted as “I balanced a gleaming can in each hand/ Limboed between worlds, repeating one dollar (17-18).”