There are lots of rhetorical questions in Hurricane Hits England, as if the narrator is asking or pleading to Huracan, Oya, Hattie and Shango (Gods of wind, thunder. Hattie: A famous Caribbean hurricane. The language in both poems is very different; Blessing uses lots of devices and techniques to add imagery to the poem. Such as onomatopoeia: “The small splash” “Imagine the drip of it” “Silver crashes to the ground.”
Blessing also uses similes “The skin cracks like a pod” personification “as the blessing sings” and a few times alliteration “flow has found” “sometimes, the sudden rush” “polished to perfection.”
A metaphor is used in the middle of the poem “silver crashes to the ground” this is a good line as it also includes onomatopoeia.
There is also sibilance “small splash” and some ambiguous lines.
There are a few cases of enjambment and lots of cases of imagery in both poems.
However, Hurricane Hits England uses a different approach, using carefully crafted pairs of adjectives to create lots of imagery and appeal to the reader’s senses. “howling ship” “gathering rage” There is lots of strong adjectives “reaping, ancestral, crusted, craving” There is also a simile “falling heavy as whales”
Lots of rhetorical questions are asked “Tell me why you visit an English coast?” “Even as you short circuit us into further darkness?” What is the meaning of reaping havoc in new places?” These make you wonder who the narrator is talking to. She talks to Gods in the poem telling them to talk to her and relates to Hattie; a famous Caribbean hurricane, as her “sweeping back home cousin.” In some parts of the poem she seem like she is a hurricane. Quotes which back this is the sixth stanza: “Tropical Oya of weather, I am aligning myself to you, I am following the movement of your wind, I am riding the mystery of your storm.” This seems to be her getting close to Oya, the goddess of wind.
The tone in Blessing starts slower quite sad and depressing “There is never enough water.” And “imagine the drip of it, the small splash” (sibilance)
But as it continues it gets faster and happier as more fortunate thing happen. “Sometimes the sudden rush of fortune, the municipal pipe bursts, silver (water) crashes to the ground…” This create happier thoughts – using imagery – as it then carries on to say “from the huts a congregation: every man* woman* child for streets around butts in, with pots, brass, copper, aluminium, plastic buckets, frantic hands”
Note the lack of commas (*) This is so that the poem keeps flowing fast like the water would, how it is described in the poem.
Lots of imagery is created with enjambment and personification, “naked children screaming in the liquid sun” The effect of this line shows that you can imagine lots of children dancing and laughing under a spring of water.
The tone is Hurricane Hits England also starts quite slow and explanatory. “It took a hurricane to bring her closer to the landscape. As the poem progresses rhetorical questions are asked to the Gods (Oya and Shango.) As the poem ends the narrator seems to be more understandable of the hurricane. “Ah sweet mystery” “come to let me know why the earth is the earth, is the earth, is the earth.”
The overall meaning of Blessing is that people in some places of the world are not as lucky as us and that whereas we take water for granted these people in the poem value it with great respect as it may not come so easy for them.
The overall meaning of Hurricane Hits England is that the narrator has moved to England from the Caribbean and as not being settling in very well and misses the Caribbean climate perhaps. But when the hurricane arrived she fells unchained and enjoys it as it reminded her of old times.
Ed Horrocks 10SSB
