Poetry comparison – blessing & hurricane

This is a poem written by a Caribbean poet named Grace Nichols. It shows what it means to her as a black women living in England, and she tells us how the Caribbean merges with the English hurricane. The structure of this poem is made up of 8 stanzas consisting of varying lengths. The poem is written mostly in free verse – there is no rhyme scheme; stanzas vary in length, as do the lines, though the first line in the poem is a perfect parameter.

In the first stanza of the poem it is written in 3rd person, but most of the other parts of the poem are written in 1st person. In the 4th line of the first stanza, Grace Nichols uses a metaphor in the sentence “ The howling ship of the wind”. She then talks about it being “ like some dark ancestral spectre”. She is trying to say it is like a family ghost which she is familiar with and most of her family have experienced in the Caribbean.

She then uses the words “ Fearful and reassuring” at first looking at these two words they don’t go together, but what the poet is doing is, she is using an oxymoron and a paradox and what she is trying to say is that she is petrified of the hurricane, but at the same time it still reminds her of home and she is reassured and also the storm reminded her of where she came from and it helps her to realise that the same force is at work in England. In the second stanza the poet talks to the tropical gods of weather. She uses the Jamaican language of patois when she says “ talk to me huracan, talk to me Oya and Hattie”.

She also uses repetition in this stanza to emphasise that she is talking to the Caribbean gods. On the fifth line of the 2nd stanza she says “ My sweeping, back home cousin”. She uses personification in this line because she is trying to say it has become part of her family due to her having experienced it that many time in her childhood. She is also trying to say that the hurricane reminds her of home and she questions why she is happy to see it. In the 3rd stanza the poet says “ Tell me why you visit an English coast? ” In this line she is talking to the storm asking why it is following her.

In the fifth line in the same stanza the poet says “ of old tongues reaping havoc in new places”. What she is saying here is that an old friend of hers is following and is causing havoc in new places she goes. In the fifth stanza the poet says “ what is the meaning of trees falling as heavy as whales, their crusted roots, their cratered graves”. In that stanza the poet is sing a simile “ heavy as whales” and what she is trying to achieve in this stanza is that she is comparing how the hurricane destroys big things in both her worlds meaning the Caribbean and England.

She is also trying to say that the wind is ripping the trees out the ground and leaving holes like graves. In the next line the poet uses a question to sum up how she is feeling. This question is different to the other questions she uses earlier in the poem. Because it is much more personal, she is talking about the effect of the hurricane on herself not on the landscape as she did earlier. She says “ o why is my heart unchained”. What she is trying to say here is that she feels more free ; alive. In the seventh stanza, the poet then goes on to talk about “ the tropical Oya of the weather”.

There she is talking about the weather god. She then says “ I am following the mystery movement of your winds; I am riding the mystery of your storm”. What she is trying to say there is that she is enjoying something she has not encountered before. In the last line of the poem the poet uses repetition to add emphasis on what he is saying. The Central theme of the poem is retracing the poet’s journey from the west, and recalls her origins. The poem is full of natural imagery because it shows the effect of the wind on the landscape.

One example to show this is “ trees falling as heavy as whales” this is a simile but it is also portraying to the reader that the huge trees become like whales when the heavy rain makes the land look almost like a sea. There is a symbolic meaning in these images she is trying to portray because for example the poet says “ Come to brake the frozen lake in me” What the poet means by this is that she has been frozen by being away from her own country so that the arrival of the hurricane can help ‘ break the ice’ and allow her to live more comfortably in her new surroundings.

The poet also uses sound to enhance the poem by echoing certain phrases. For example in the 7th stanza she uses “ I am aligning”, “ I am following”, “ I am riding”. The echoes create rhythmtic pattern and adds a musical voice to the poem. Also the tone the poet uses is in a grateful way. Blessing This poem written by an Indian poet named Imtiaz Dharker. In this poem Imtiaz Dharker shows how something so simple as water can cause such an astonishing reaction. It tells us what it is like to be without water, and shows what it is like to suddenly have water.

Because the part of India where Imtiaz Dharker is from is called Dharavi on the outskirts of Bombay there is a lack of water and temperatures could rise up to 40 degrees. The Poem is structured in to 4 stanzas of different lengths. The poet uses short stanzas to tell us what it is like to be without water and longer stanza show what it is like to suddenly have water. The word blessing which is used for the title is used as a metaphor to try and say water is like a blessing. In the first stanza the poet uses a simile she says “ the skin cracks like a pod, There never is enough water”.

There she is referring to the skin of the earth. The image the poet is trying to portray here is of the land, she is trying to show image of the effect of drought when the ground dries up and starts to split and crack when there isn’t any water and becomes useless for growing. She is also trying to say that this is like the skin of a seed-pod, which dries up and becomes brittle once it has fallen to the earth, and it also reminds us of the pain we feel when our skin splits.

In the second stanza the poet says “ Imagine the drip of it, the small splash” in that sentence the poet is talking about water and how the people keep imagining about the drip of water which they desperately want. Thereafter the poet says “ echo in a tin mug” there the poet is using an onomatopoeia. In the next line the poet says “ the voice of a kindly god” there the poet is trying to say that the water is like a god this is a religious connotation. In the next stanza the poet refers to ‘ men, women and children’.

In the first line of the 3rd stanza the says “ sometimes the sudden rush of fortune” what the poet is saying here is that the people treat the sudden slightest bit of water they receive they treat it with as much respect as they would with gold. She later goes on to say the “ the municipal pipe bursts, silver crashes to the ground”. Here she is talking about the government pipes from time to time bursting. She then uses a metaphor when she describes water like silver she is saying water is like an expensive metal. In the next two lines the poet describes the water and also uses a personification.

She says “ and the flow has found a roar of tongues, from the huts a congregation”. When the poet says “ from the guts a congregation” the poet uses a word with two meanings by saying this she means a group of people and also she could be saying a group of worshippers coming to devote their lives for the water. In the 9th line of the 3rd stanza the poet uses an enjambment by saying “ brass, copper, and aluminium” and she says “ plastic buckets, frantic hands” the poet is trying to show to the reader that the people are treating it like masses of money by collecting it in buckets.

In the 4th final stanza the poet focuses on the children only whereas in the 3rd stanza she talks about all people. In this stanza the poet says that there are “ naked children screaming in the liquid hot sun”. The poet is trying to say that the children are screaming with joy that they have finally received some water and the water is made into a bright and luminous fluid in the scorching sun and also they are appreciating the water which is being lit up by the sun.

In the last two lines the poet says “ the blessing sings over their small bones” she uses a metaphor her saying the water is a blessing and it being poured over the contented children’s small bones. This is also a religious connotation. The central theme & idea in this poem is that water is so essential to life and it comes to be seen as supremely precious and a divine gift to those people living in hot, dry countries. The images the poet portrays are of the dry split land and of the glistening silver water. Comparison

There are many things which are different in this poem one thing is the structure of the two poems. They are different because the structure for hurricane hits England is made up of 8 stanzas, consisting of varying lengths and the poem is written mostly in free verse – there is no rhyme scheme; stanzas vary in length, as do the lines. Now Blessing is completely different because the Poem is structured in to 4 stanzas of different lengths, the poet uses short stanzas to tell us what it is like to be without water and longer stanza show what it is like to suddenly have water.

However one thing similar is that there are certain stanzas which refer to specific people or things for example in blessing stanza 3 refers to ‘ men women and children only and in stanza 4 it just focuses on the children only. In hurricane hits England in the 6th stanza she talks about herself not about the hurricane and also in the first stanza she writes it in 3rd person which the reader is being introduced to the woman and the rest of the poem is written in first person about a firsthand knowledge of a woman experiencing a hurricane.