Poetry Comparison Essay
Hurricane Hits England
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.
