Nichols, similarly to Harmonium, uses a metaphor to describe the importance of a mother to a daughter.
‘You were
water to me
deep and bold and fathoming’
We cannot survive without water and it makes up around two-thirds of our body-so Nichols tries to show that the mother of the speaker is an essential part of her daughter. ‘Fathoming’ suggests that her mother helped her to ‘fathom’-understand and work out life. This connects to the next stanza; “You were moon’s eye to me’. The moon influences tides, which is what the water could be seen as, which implies that the speaker’s mother was a big influence on her. Many of this poem’s metaphors seem to link to vital processes needed for life, comparing it to the Caribbean; Caribbean islands are surrounded by water of which the tides are affected by the moon, and the water contains fish which need gills in order to breathe and survive, just like how the speaker feels- breathing is a reflex action and something you take for granted, so perhaps the narrator took her mother for granted and didn’t realise how vital her mother was before she left. ‘You were’ implies that her mother is dead.. ‘The crab’s leg/fried plantain smell’ is another Caribbean- a Caribbean speciality. Nichols shows that her mother was like the ‘fried plantain smell’ to her. Food is also important to sustain life. Nichols simply shows how important the mother was the speaker.
In Harmonium, Armitage describes the shock he feels when his father jokes about his own death;
“And I, being me, then mouth in reply some shallow or sorry phrase or word
too starved of breath to make itself heard.”
It is quite a long sentence without a pause, which means that when read out loud the reader quickly becomes ‘starved of breath’ too, which emphasises the speaker’s feelings. Literally, it could be because the harmonium is too heavy, or it could be the shock at the thought of losing his father. Armitage presents a father who is very blunt, and makes it obvious that the son does not have his father’s humour, because it’s ‘he, being him’ and I. being me’, so although they are father and son, the do not necessarily share a similar personality and the speaker isn’t quick-witted enough to reply properly, and can only ‘mouth some shallow phrase or word’. However, ‘he, being him’ sounds affectionate despite the differences in personality, so they still have a close bong. The reader is unsure about the precise reason for the speaker’s shock. It could be because of the way his father found his own death rather amusing than scary and treating a delicate subject badly, or it could be the fact that he really will die soon, as there is evidence that he is a smoker ‘yellowed the fingernails’ and ‘tobacco smog’.
In Praise Song, instead of shock at death, Nichols learns that physical separation cannot sever the speaker’s bond with her mother.
“Go to your wide futures, you said”
This seems as if the mother is setting her daughter free, encouraging her into the future. The comma is the first piece of punctuation in the entire poem, and it almost feel like a sigh. This could suggest that the speaker is wistful, as if she does not want to go to her futures without her mother. However, there is no full stop in the poem, which suggests that her mother will still be guiding Nichols even when physically absent, and that there really is no end. “Wide” tells the reader that the mother feels optimistic and proud of her child and believes that the speaker will do well, whatever she does, and has the potential to do a lot of things. ‘futures’ is plural and could either mean that she could do anything she wants and make a future, or that she will have a future as a parent, as a wife, and as someone succeeding in their career at the same time.
I think that both poems display a kind of shock or realisation at the loss of a parent. In Harmonium, Armitage presents the shock of a son at the realisation that one day his father will die. In Praise Song, Nichols’ character realises she must come to terms with her mother’s death and move on. I think that Nichols is much more open about the love of the narrator for her mother, simply stating the importance, presenting a stereotypical mother and daughter relationship which is open and honest. Whereas, Armitage shows a son who finds it harder to describe his feelings for his father, and shows it by using an extended metaphor of a harmonium, in order to show the reader all the memories he has had because of his father, and how he loves him. The way his father jokes about his own death is an example of the stereotypical father and son relationship; not as open about feelings.
