(a) Name the poem and the poet. (b) How does potato digging turn into a procession?

Question

Read the extracts given below and answer the questions that follow:

‘Heads bow, trunks bend, hands fumble towards the ***** Mother.

Processional stooping through the turf turns work to ritual.

Centuries of ** and homage to the famine * toughen

the muscles behind their humbled knees,

Make a seasonal altar of the sod.’

(a) Name the poem and the poet.

(b) How does potato digging turn into a procession?

(c) Explain: 'famine ***' convey?

(d) What does ‘seasonal alter of the sod’ mean?

(e) Pick out and explain the figure of speech in the last line.

Answer 1

(a) At a Potato Digging by Seamus Heaney

(b) The poet compares potato digging to a traditional procession/ laborers are bending down, straightening their body and then they are moving on like devotees

(c) ** of the famine/reminded of the past/they seem to be worshipping a famine * to keep the famine at bay

(d) The ground becomes the place of worship each year as those harvesting are only too aware that such bounty in nature cannot be taken for granted

(e) Metaphor: the wet earth yields food, a human necessity, intensified by famine altar of the sod.