Answer each of the five questions about the following poem in a well-written paragraph. Remember to pay close attention to the relationships between form and content in the poem. How does the structure and style of the poem contribute to its meaning?

You should print a copy of this page on an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper, and bring it with you to the class. You are allowed to write notes on this sheet, but you must write the responses themselves in class. You are required to hand in this sheet along with your paper at the end of the class.

Soft corrugations in the boortree's trunk,

Its green young shoots, its rods like freckled solder:

It was our bower as children, a greenish, dank

And snapping memory as I get older.

And elderberry I have learned to call it.                                                     5

I love its blooms like saucers brimmed with meal,

Its berries a swart caviar of shot,

A buoyant spawn, a light bruised out of purple.

Elderberry? It is shires dreaming wine.

Boortree is bower tree, where I played 'touching tongues'                            10

And felt another's texture quick on mine.

So, etymologist of roots and graftings,

I fall back to my tree-house and would crouch

Where small buds shoot and flourish in the hush.

1. What, in your view, is the central theme of this poem? What argument or point does the poet want to make here?

2. What kind (or genre) of poem is this? (See the title!) How does the poet develop or change or use this structure to make his argument?

3. Choose a key image or a key word from the poem and explain how it contributes to the theme you have noted in question 1.

4. Scan any line from the poem. How do rhythm and metre reinforce meaning in the poem?

5. What commentary on the nature and practice of writing or word-craft does this poem make? How is the act of naming at issue here? Where, in Heaney's view, does language or meaning come from?