"Digging" by Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it. 

Seamus Heaney's poems tended to combine elements from his heritage in northern Ireland and the landscape of the area in order to demonstrate what he thought it meant to be Irish or to be a writer. He reflected his identity through his use of imagery and his description of the rural areas. This can be seen in one of his most popular poems, "Digging" where the speaker talks of what his father and grandmother before him did and are doing, and how that reflects upon himself. He sees his writing as his way of continuing the hard work that his family did themselves. He uses the imagery of his father digging in the garden and the hard work that he puts into it, and then relates it to how he identifies himself, commenting of his writing that he'll "dig with it." In this way he tries to show how he is continuing in the same vein as his forebears - though what he does outwardly is different, he carries the same spirit within him to work.

(I don't suppose I wrote down what type of poet he was, so I simply pointed out what he typically wrote about and how this was one of his typical poems as said by the document, since he was included under "other notable poets" on that sheet)

Also, Seamus Heaney died last year on August 30th, so he's a fairly recent poet. (also it's really sad that he died just last year like wow he did live for 74 years but still man wow death)