Introduction
Both “nettles” and “praise song for my mother” focus on parent child relationships. “nettles” is a poem that tells a story about a little boy who falls into some nettles, and “praise song for my mother” is a poem that displays love and praise for someone’s mother. However both poems show the feelings of both the parents and the children.
The poem “nettles” is a very strait forward poem and its main focus lays on one incident, which tells the story of a young boy who falls into a bed of nettles and his dad protects him. However “praise song for my mother” is completely different it’s more general than strait forward and each verse lists another reason why she loves her mother. Also “praise song for my mother” includes lots of metaphor’s and word play where as “nettles” just tells the story how it is.
Both “Nettles” and “Praise song for my mother” include lots of imagery. “Nettles” incorporates a theme of war and military the nettles that hurt the poet’s son are referred to as “green spears” and “that regiment of spite” this is strange as although nettles can cause irritation and sharp pain, they are not forceful like weapons used in war. The father finds it unbearable that his son has been hurt. Therefore he has a need to protect him and to prevent it from occurring again. The war imagery also suggests that the poet had been in the war or experienced what war was like. And in “Praise song for my mother” there is a consistent use of metaphor’s many of which include nature “you were the moons eye to me” and “you were sunrise to me” are just two of many used.
In “praise song for my mother” the structure is very well noticed, the first stanza starts off with two syllables on the first line “you were” then go on to use four syllables “sunrise to me”, then generally it goes to six or seven “deep