Nettles and Manhunt

Nettles
Relationship
Parent and child: My son aged three’. The speaker loves his son and is fiercely protective of him. He describes his skin as ‘tender’ (L6). He responds to the nettles in a violent way- ‘slashed in fury’ (L10). He approaches their destruction in a methodical way ‘next task’ (L12).

Subject
The subject is a small vulnerable boy and ‘he came seeking comfort’ (L5)- he looks up at his father. The alliteration of ‘blisters beaded’ shows the harshness of the skin on his ‘tender skin’ (L6). While the speaker succeeds in destroying the nettles at first, the final suggests that he will not be able to defend his child always. ‘My son would often feel sharp wounds again’. There seems to be a sad resignation about this

Extended Metaphor
The response of the speaker to the physical pain caused by the nettles is compared with a battle where the nettles are the enemy soldiers ‘regiment of spite’.

The extended metaphor shows the protective instinct of the father as he deliberately set out to destroy the nettles- ‘I took my hook and honed the blade’ (L9)- the assonance and alliteration draw the rhythm out to show the time he took to plan his revenge. It also shows the vulnerability of the boy- ‘sobs and tears’, ‘blisters beaded’ and that his father will not always be able to be there for him.

Development
‘Imagery’- ‘green spears’, regiment of spite’, ‘fierce parade’ ‘funeral pyre to burn the fallen dead’ and ‘tall recruits’.

The Manhunt
Relationship
It is a lover’s relationship ‘passionate nights and intimate days’ (L2). The speaker loves the subjects and refers to him as delicate and precious: ‘Porcelain collar-bone’ (L8) and ‘parachute silk’ (L12) He shows a number of verbs- ‘explore’, ‘trace’, ‘mind and attend’ to show his gentle and caring approach.

Subject
The subject is emotionally scarred and frightened to allow the speaker in- ‘tightened and closed’ (L25). It takes time and patience to conquer this fear- repetition of ‘only then’. At the end, however, the speaker seems to succeed: ‘did I come close” (L26)- it ends on a positive note.

Extended Metaphor
Emotional damage is compared with a series of physical injuries to the body. The extended metaphor effectively shows the real emotional pain of the subject as it is ‘buried deep in his mind’ and the wound and ‘scarring’ is like a ‘foetus of metal’ growing and seemingly indestructible. The speaker’s difficulty in getting through to him is shown in the many verbs, which indicate his persistence and caring as well as the repetition which shows the time it took.

Development
Look closely at the imagery- ‘blown hinge’, ‘damaged’, ‘fractured’, ‘bullet’ and ‘unexploded mine’: these words/ phrases all suggest a physical battle and pain.

Hour
Arranged into three quatrains and a couplet.
Concerned with romantic love
Has the rhyme scheme abab, cdcd, efef, gg
Uses iambic pentameter (five pairs of syllables, stressed and unstressed in each line)
The final couplet provides a summing up of the ideas in the poem.

Duffy uses sonnet form to allow the poem to flow, to show and mirror their love and how time is simply floating by. However the poem does break with sonnet conventions for example usually a sonnet is one stanza but she has broken with this convention and arranged into three quatrains and a couplet. Her use of half rhymes mirror how their love is only there not perfect due to the time limit.

The poet says ‘time hates love, want love poor’. I think here the poet means that the characters in the poem are running out of time to love. That as time goes on it becomes harder to love because the minutes ‘time’ are quickly dwindling away. That time and love are in an eternal feud to cancel each other out.

Metaphor- ‘Love’s times beggars’ means love is needs time in order to survive because as time runs out so does time.

Praise song for my mother
Description
Throughout the whole poem she’s describing her love for her mother and the vast amounts of it. ‘Fathoming’ is used to describe the bottomless and endless amount of it. As the word fathom is a measurement she is measuring the love her mother has expressed for her.

Past tense
The use of past tense ‘you were’ brings out the emotions in the poem because the use of past tense suggests that she now misses her mother. It also suggests that something may have happened to her mother whether it’s that she’s passed away or there has been a change in their relationship.

Extended metaphor
The whole poem is very metaphorical we can see this in every stanza of the poem. ‘You were water to me’ Here what Grace Nichols means is that much like humans need water to survive the character needs her mother.

Structure
There is the repetition of the words ‘you were’ at the beginning of every stanza may indicate that the mother has passed away.

Relationship
The poem talks about a personal relationship between the character and her mother. The word ‘fathoming’ shows the bottomless and endless amount of love the character feels for her mother. The word ‘mantling’ shows she viewed her mother as a protective person.

Ghazal

Main themes
Love
Separation
Forbidden or impossible love

Traditionally Ghazals were spiritual or religious poems with the beloved metaphor for God. The love referred to in a Ghazal is written from the point of view of a lover which is beyond reach or unattainable.

This Ghazal is about obsessive love. ‘if yours the iron fist in the velvet glove when the arrow flies the heart is pierced, tattoo me.’ You associate an iron fist and velvet glove with boxing therefore one can interpret that she’s saying she doesn’t care if her lover must be violent, she expresses a masochist attitude and accepts this kind of treatment as long as the lovers can be together. She’d rather be pierced through the heart then without her lover at all.

The character feels that the love is unattainable however they still refuse to let go of the love because it means everything to them. ‘Be heaven and earth to me and I’ll be twice the me I am, if only half the world you are to me’ because of this strong love and attachment the character feels, they even promise the impossible in hope of being with what/ who she most desires. She compares her love to ‘heaven’. The word heaven represents transcendence therefore she is saying how important and supreme the love she feels is by comparing her love to something out of this world.