Literature
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- Summary Of My Parents By Stephen Spender
Stephen Spender (1909-1995) mixed with a number of left wing poets while at oxford including W.H Auden, and joined the fight against Fran coin the Spanish Civil war. Always interested in human and social concerns, he questioned how poetry could address...
- Summary Of The Trees Are Down By Charlotte Mew
Charlotte Mew (1869 - 1927) was highly regarded by writers such as Thomas Hardy. She vowed never to marry because she feared she might carry hereditary mental illness, as a brother and sister committed to institutions. This fear, and grief...
- One Art By Elizabeth Bishop Summary
One ArtBorn in 1911, Elizabeth Bishop had a turbulent childhood, her father dying in her first year of life, while her mother suffered from mental illness and was committed to an institution when Elizabeth was five. She was never...
- The Postmaster Summary
Summary of The Postmaster In the small village of Ulapur, an Englishman who owns an indigo factory near it manages to get a post office established....
- The Chimney Sweeper (innocence) By William Blake
The Chimney Sweeper (Innocence) by William Blake When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue, Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep, So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep. Theres little Tom Dacre, who cried...
Literature
Praise Songs for my Mother Summary
Praise Songs for my Mother
Grace Nichols was born in 1950 in Georgetown, Guyana, and grew up in a small coastal village before moving to the city when she was eight. This experience was central to her first novel, Whole of a Morning Sky(1986), set in 1960s Guyana in the middle of the country's struggle for independence. She has worked as a teacher and a journalist and has a strong interest in Guyanese folk tales, Amerindian myths and the South American Aztec and Inca civilizations. She has lived in the UK since 1977 and her poems often express a Caribbean philosophy, sometimes directly contrasting with the spirit of the UK.
The tradition of the Praise Song comes from West Africa and from there to the Caribbean, so the term in the title of this poem sets a cultural background. The patterning of the short stanzas on the page, through shape and repetition, also establishes the poem's identity as a song.
Its also important that the metaphors which Nichols uses to describe the importance of the mother are all drawn from the physical world - the things that surrounded her in her childhood : 'water' , 'moon' , 'sunrise' , 'fishes' , 'flame tree', 'crab' and 'plantain'. These references also represent the cycle of the days, shade and sustenance, all of which are contained within the poem's conception of motherhood. Note the continuity suggested by the present participle form of the verbs at the end of each stanza, particularly the repeated 'replenishing'.
The memories of the surroundings of childhood are an important contrast with the move to 'wide futures' at the end of the poem. Consider the effect of this last line forming a stanza on its own.
-Grace Nichols
- Summary Of My Parents By Stephen Spender
Stephen Spender (1909-1995) mixed with a number of left wing poets while at oxford including W.H Auden, and joined the fight against Fran coin the Spanish Civil war. Always interested in human and social concerns, he questioned how poetry could address...
- Summary Of The Trees Are Down By Charlotte Mew
Charlotte Mew (1869 - 1927) was highly regarded by writers such as Thomas Hardy. She vowed never to marry because she feared she might carry hereditary mental illness, as a brother and sister committed to institutions. This fear, and grief...
- One Art By Elizabeth Bishop Summary
One ArtBorn in 1911, Elizabeth Bishop had a turbulent childhood, her father dying in her first year of life, while her mother suffered from mental illness and was committed to an institution when Elizabeth was five. She was never...
- The Postmaster Summary
Summary of The Postmaster In the small village of Ulapur, an Englishman who owns an indigo factory near it manages to get a post office established....
- The Chimney Sweeper (innocence) By William Blake
The Chimney Sweeper (Innocence) by William Blake When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue, Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep, So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep. Theres little Tom Dacre, who cried...