Praise Song For My Mother Essay

‘Praise Song for My Mother’ written by Grace Nichols and ‘Morning Song’ Sylvia Plath both convey the emotional connection between mother and child, in the form of how a mother loves for and impacts her child. In ‘Praise Song for My Mother’, Nichols conveys the mother to be “Deep and bold and fathoming” as well as showing she is the “rise and warm and streaming” displaying the mother was a strong and bright figure in the Child’s life, through comforting and natural imagery. However, Plath’s persona shines through eerie imagery as “Love set you going like a fat gold watch” exhibiting that the love a mother provides a child from the beginning, corresponding with the love the mother supplies the child in other stages of life, “I wake to listen: A far sea moves in my ear” conveying the mother as a figure who protecting and guiding her child.
However Plath’s persona in ‘Morning Song’ is presented to be dark yet transforms throughout the poem to become somewhat loving towards the mother’s child, explored through the dim word choice of Plath; the relationship begins empty of love like a “New statue. In a drafty museum” yet in the end we see the mother’s desire to care for and protect the child “One cry, and I stumble from bed”. Through this imagery Nichols is able to convey the emotional connection between mother and child which is pleasant compared to Plath who also employs imagery yet conveys a progressive emotional connection between a mother and her