Final answer:
Seamus Heaney connects his poetic art to the imagery of farming and manual labor in 'Digging,' equating the pen with the spade as tools of his and his forebears' respective crafts.
Step-by-step explanation:
In Seamus Heaney's poem Digging, Heaney primarily connects his poetic art to the imagery of farming and manual labor. The poem begins with the poet contemplating his pen and contemplating the nature of his own work in comparison to his forebears who were engaged in the physical labor of digging. Heaney's father and grandfather are depicted as skilled at digging, with rich descriptions of the land and the action of digging into the earth. The tactile imagery of the spade slicing into the ground and the sensory experiences tied to the soil are contrasted with the delicate action of the pen in the poet's hand. This linkage suggests that Heaney sees his writing as a form of labor akin to farming, requiring the same dedication and capable of yielding its form of harvest.
The imagery employed is grounded in the texture of earth and the rhythm of laborious work, rather than abstract concepts or intellectual pursuits. The pen becomes a symbolic equivalent of the spade, thus Heaney links his poetic art to the tradition and craft handed down from his ancestors, albeit in a different medium.