Examine the appropriateness of the title of the poem "Digging" by Heaney.

The title of this excellent poem by the Nobel Prize
winning poet is actually an extended metaphor, as throughout the poem a comparison is
made between the father's work and the way that the poet is carrying on in his father's
footsteps. This comparison is most clearly established in the last three lines of the
poem:

Between
my finger and my thumb

The squat pen
rests.

I'll dig with
it.

What is important to
Heaney and to so many of the poems is his family past, and in this poem he shows how he
can dig into or explore his memory of the collective memory of his family and culture.
He can likewise dig into the minds and hearts of people, creating poems that illuminate
human experience. Cutting turf may not be thought to be the most beneficial of topics
for poetry, yet Heaney shows how even this can be fertile ground for poets such as
himself, as he expresses the way that he feels united with his predecessors through
blood, memory and the soil.