Praise Song For My Mother Analysis

The poems ‘Praise Song For My Mother’ by Grace Nichols and ‘Harmonium’ by Simon Armitage use different techniques to present the themes of relationships with family and death in different ways.

In ‘Praise Song For My Mother’, Nichols uses imagery and abstract language to demonstrate her relationship with her mother and what kind of a person she was. The phrase “you were water to me,” creates vivid imagery of seas and rivers and gives the impression that she was dependent on her mother, as water is vital for humans to survive. The next line, “deep and bold and fathoming,” could also make the reader think of large volumes of water enveloping the speaker, which could have connotations of her mother holding her in her arms. The word “fathoming”

could suggest that her mother had a personality that was all-encompassing and affected everyone she met.

Similarly, in ‘Harmonium’, Armitage also uses imagery and vivid description in the line “through his own blue cloud of tobacco smog,/ with smoker’s fingers and dottled thumbs...” In contrast to Nichols’ use of imagery to present her relationship with her mother and show the reader what she was like as a person, Armitage uses it more to describe his father’s appearance, which could hint at the fact that he is growing old. The phrases “dottled thumbs” and “smoker’s fingers” could suggest that his father’s hands are looking worn and are ‘yellowing’ with age and the effects of smoking. Smoking also has connotations with bad health and death, which could create a sense of foreboding around the subject of dying. In this sense, Armitage may have used imagery to present aging and death in a way that could possibly scare the reader or affect them emotionally, whereas Nichols may have used imagery to highlight the positive aspects of people before they died and to ‘celebrate’ their life.

Nichols’ use of enjambment may also portray how she feels about the death of close relatives and friends. The absence of punctuation in the last line, “Go to your wide futures, you said”, could symbolise the view of life and death being a never-ending cycle, as the sentence has no definite ending. It may also represent the afterlife; more could still be added to the poem because there is no ending, just like how there may be life after death and how the end of life on earth may not be the end of life entirely. Nichols portrays life and death in a positive light, as something that should not be an entirely sad occasion, and focuses on the most important things about her mother’s life instead of the fact that she has died.

In contrast, Armitage’s use of punctuation at the end of ‘Harmonium’ could show that he believes that death is a very final and sudden thing. The full stop at the end of the line “too starved of breath to make itself heard.” shows the reader that it is definitely the end of the poem, and reflects the theme that runs through the poem of death being a sombre and final affair. Whereas ‘Praise Song For My Mother’ highlights the positive aspects of life and death, ‘Harmonium’ reinforces the typical view that death is something sad and sudden.

The use of the metaphor “you were the fishes red gill to me” in ‘Praise Song For My Mother’ suggests to the reader that the speaker had a happy, healthy relationship with her mother. The use of the word ‘gill’ portrays her mother as being the person that helped her to breathe and to grow. This gives the impression to the reader that her mother was a very important and influential figure in her life, without whom she would not be the person she is today. It also shows that the speaker is thankful for everything her mother did for her and does not want to dwell on the sadness of her death; she just wants to be happy that her mother was there for her when she was alive.

Unlike ‘Praise Song For My Mother’, ‘Harmonium’ portrays a father-son relationship which seems to be more reserved and distant in communication.

The use of the metaphor in the lines “[And he, being him, can’t help but say] that the next box I’ll shoulder through this nave, will bear the freight of his own dead weight”, shows the father figure in the poem likening his coffin to a “box”and his body to “freight”, which could create a sense of dehumanisation and could possibly shock the reader as it is such a blunt comparison. The next lines, “And I, being me, then mouth in reply/ some shallow or sorry phrase or word” suggest to the reader that the speaker does not appreciate this comment from his father and feels it is too morbid to talk about. This comparison of how the two men react towards the father’s death suggests that the speaker was not able to be as open with his parent as the speaker in ‘Praise Song For My Mother’, and could also suggest that he feels nostalgic about this relationship being ‘lost’ or ‘wasted’. The speaker in ‘Praise Song For My Mother’ seems to be more accepting of death as something that is natural, whereas the speaker in ‘Harmonium’ does not seem to have accepted that one day his father is going to die and he will have to cope with

it.

From exploring these two poems, I have come to the conclusion that the themes of death and relationships with parents run throughout both of the poems, and that both poems use imagery, metaphors and structural techniques to create different powerful effects on the reader. However, these themes are portrayed in two different ways, and this is the main difference between the poems - ‘Praise Song For My Mother’ is a reflection on the speaker’s mother’s life and celebrates her life, but ‘Harmonium’ presents the themes of death and relationships in a more negative way.