Context

Seamus Heaney's famous poem "Digging" opens with these lines. We're introduced to the speaker and what he is doing, which is... holding a pen.

Um, yeah. Dude's writing a poem. Of course he's holding a pen, right? 

Don't worry, though—it gets more interesting then pen holding. There's also lots of hole-digging and memory-lane-strolling.

Where you've heard it

This is an oft-quoted passage for a whole bunch of reasons. We'll lay 'em out for you.

First of all, it equates writing with the power of holding a gun. Let's be honest: it's normally the literary types who are quoting poetry in the first place, so of course they like a poem that talks about the potency of the pen. Of course, most of the poem is not about how writing is like a gun but about how a pen is like a spade. Maybe that sounds less impressive, but to the speaker, who comes from generations of farmers, we get the impression that it's much more important.

But let's stop the spud talk and dig in to how these lines are constructed. See how much of the imagery contrasts itself: "snug as a gun"? "Snug" and "rest" sound like such nice, quaint, passive words. Notice that it's even the pen, and not the hand, that seems to have agency: "the pen rests."

But it's all compared to a gun, something which sounds powerful and deadly and doesn't conjure up memories of being curled up in a blanket by the fire with a mug of hot cocoa cuddling our stuffed dinosaur Rex and reading from an anthology of heartwarming stories with dogs that don't die. Or, you know, whatever "snug" makes you think of.

Pretentious Factor

If you were to drop this quote at a dinner party, would you get an in-unison "awww" or would everyone roll their eyes and never invite you back? Here it is, on a scale of 1-10.

If gardening and potato farming sound pretentious to you, you're going to have a long and flowerless life.