Compare How the Poets Present Their Feelings in ‘Praise Song for My Mother’ and Nettles(Unfinish)

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Grace Nichols adapts the structure of ‘Praise Song’ shows that her feelings for the loss of her mother are too much to follow the constraints of the African Eulogy. The first three stanzas dealt with generic natural imagery to express her feelings towards her mother, but then shifts to personal, evocative imagery in stanza four. This is when she breaks the structure of the eulogy, as her personal memories overwhelm the constraints of the ancient form. However, she uses repetition of ‘replenishing’ to slow the pace of her broken structure and regain control. In comparison, the structure of ‘Nettles’ is controlled and resembles a sonnet, which is relevant as he is expressing feelings of love and protection for his child. This relates to the methodical rhythm of an army march. Furthermore, his systematic rhyming and metering could represent his desire to control the environment around his child, despite knowing this is futile. ‘Praise Song’ uses natural imagery to present the daughter’s feelings towards her mother. “You were moon’s eye”. The use of the pronoun shows a close relationship between her and her mother and that it instantly makes the poem much more personal. The moon is always there, despite it not being visible in the day time, so she feels her mother is always watching her. Furthermore, she is also compared to the ‘sunrise’, which emphasises the former point further. Nichols chooses natural imagery that conveys power and essential life-giving forces to represent the great influence of her mother on her, like the sun, moon and oceans on the Earth. In addition, it implies that she feels her mother is genuine, natural and pure, as we make these associations with natural metaphors. In contrast, ‘Nettles’ also makes use of natural imagery to convey feelings, but in a negative way: “green spears”. Natural imagery is tied in with a semantic field of war

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