Question

Read the stanza below from the poem “Birmingham Sunday” by Richard Fariña and complete the instruction that follows.

The men in the forest they once asked of me,
How many black berries grew in the Blue Sea.
And I asked them right back with a tear in my eye.
How many dark ships in the forest?



Analyze the way in which Fariña uses figurative language and sensory imagery to stir the reader’s emotions and create meaning in this stanza.

Answer 1

To me, I believe these lines represent the different forms and tasks of slavery/slaves in America. The slaves in the country were asking about the black berries, like the harvesters on fields that were in the ocean, where they thought life would be better. The slave, equally as distraught asked them about the dark ships, which I believe are slave ships, in the country. This to me showed that they thought there was a better way of life for them available at the time, but truly every black man and woman was struggling with whatever task was put upon them.

Answer 2

The stanza is an example of extended metaphor. It is interesting that the lines are unchanged from the original song from which the melody for “Birmingham Sunday” is taken. In this metaphor, the “men in the forest” seemed awfully concerned about the “black berries.” At the same time, the speaker, “with a tear” in his or her eye, asks about the “dark ships.” Although this stanza can be taken many different ways, I think it is a metaphor for the fear that people feel for things they do not understand. The men in the forest are scared of things they don’t know from the Blue Sea, while the speaker (who seems to be from the Blue Sea based on the question posed) is fearful of the dark ships in the forest. In this way, the extended metaphor is speaking about the fear that races have of each other and the meaninglessness of that fear. Just as the “black berries” or “dark ships” mean nothing to us, race shouldn’t mean anything when evaluating the worth of a person.