It took a hurricane, to bring her closer To the landscape.

Half the night she lay awake, The howling ship of the wind, 5 Its gathering rage, Like some dark ancestral spectre. Fearful and reassuring. Talk to me Huracan Talk to me Oya Talk to me Shango And Hattie, My sweeping, back-home cousin.

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Tell me why you visit An English coast? 15 What is the meaning Of old tongues Reaping havoc In new places? The blinding illumination, 20 Even as you shortCircuit us Into further darkness? What is the meaning of trees Falling heavy as whales Their crusted roots Their cratered graves? O why is my heart unchained? Tropical Oya of the Weather, I am aligning myself to you, I am following the movement of your winds, I am riding the mystery of your storm. Ah, sweet mystery, Come to break the frozen lake in me, Shaking the foundations of the very trees within me, Come to let me know That the earth is the earth is the earth.

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The poem was written by Grace Nichols, a Caribbean women, who lived in England when a hurricane ocurred in October 1987. The hurricane brings back memories to the poet from her homeland where hurricanes are frequent. The text chosen is a poem by Grace Nichols.

 The poem is popular among Caribbean literature. And is also used in the U.K for GCSE studies. Our general expectations of the poem are that it shall be written using a caribbean and maybe more personal style. Style and sound effects

Alliteration:
Half the night she lay awake The howling ship of the wind Talk to me Huracan Talk to me Oya Talk to me Shango Their crusted roots Their cratered graves I am aligning myself to you, I am following the movement of your winds, I am riding the mystery of your Assonance What is the meaning of trees Falling heavy as whales Their crusted roots Their cratered graves? Here we can observe assonance in the way that the vowel diphthong sound /e/is repeated. Tropical Oya of the Weather, I am aligning myself to you, 30 I am following the movement of your winds, I am riding the mystery of your storm. And also in the repetition of the sound //. Come to break the frozen lake in me. In this line, there is a further example of assonance: the diphthong /e/ can be found in the red-coloured words.

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Rhyme
If we read the poem we can notice that it does not really rhyme. However, through the use of constant movement words and references it seems as though the poem is made to flow.

Ex: howling, gathering, sweeping, reaping, blinding, aligning, following, riding, shaking.

Sound Symbolism
This use of movement words can be related to sound symbolism. In the way that the phoneme ing is used repeatedly to refer to the movement and sounds going on in the poem. It makes it more life like; and as said before, gives the poem a constant flow. Thus, -ing can be said to have this purpose in the poem

Metrical Structure
The poem, as we can see, does not really follow a strict metrical structure. As for one it is not a poem that is made to rhyme. If we look closely we can also see that each stanza is constructed very differently to each other.

It took a hurricane, to bring her closer To the landscape. Half the night she lay awake, The howling ship of the wind, 5 Its gathering rage, Like some dark ancestral spectre Here we find 7 verses in one stanza reassuring. Talk to me Huracan Talk to me Oya 10 Talk to me Shango And Hattie, home cousin.

Fearful and

Here we have 5 verses in the stanza

My sweeping, back-

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Tell me why you visit An English coast? What is the meaning Of old tongues Reaping havoc Here we have 6 verses in the stanza

In new places?

Structure
As mentioned above, we can see that the poem is varied when it comes to structure. Something that stands out is the use of one verse on its own as a stanza. O why is my heart unchained?

 This verse is highlighted in the poem. And also the fact that it is a question makes it unusual, too. Though it is not the only question used in the poem. This stanza is obviously meant to be important. We can also bring to eye the use of o. This is not typically used by native British English speakers. However, it is frequently found in Caribbean texts. It is used as a sort of emphasis of pain.

Style and Word Choice

Lexical choice In general, the author uses everyday words, although we can appreciate some refined poetic words like spectre, ancestral, illumination. Most of the words used in the poem are simple. However, we can also find examples of compound words: sweeping, back-home cousin, short-circuit, reassuring, unchained. Even though most words have a concrete meaning, they acquire an abstract or metaphorical meaning in this poem: Howl, ship, wind vs. The howling ship of the wind There are three main semantic fields: The Weather: - Hurricane - Wind - Weather - Storm - Frozen The Landscape: - Landscape - Coast - Places - Roots - Lake - Trees - Earth The afterlife: - Spectre - Ancestral - Dark/darkness - Havoc - Graves - Mystery Nichols uses proper nouns to name the different Caribbean Gods, and refers to names of hurricanes.

Grammar and Style

 Generally, Nichols uses simple sentences of the kind: Subject + Verb + Object + Complement These can be found in several types: Statements: I am aligning myself to you Commands: Talk to me Huracan Tell me why you visit Questions: O Why is my heart unchained? In general, the sentences are quite long, with an average of about 12 words. An example of a striking difference in structure is that there is a stanza consisting of one verse: O Why is my heart unchained? She tends to use wh-clauses: What is the meaning Of old tongues Reaping havoc In new places?

A special kind of clause construction is found in the first verse of the third stanza: Tell me why you visit. An English coast? Here we can observe that it is a wh-clause expressed as a command by adding the imperative tell me. Moreover, the structure is broken up by the addition of a full stop after visit. The noun phrases in the poem are relatively simple, with some exceptions such as in the following example, where we can observe that an adjective has been added into the noun phrase: Tropical Oya of the Weather With respect to verb phrases, the poem starts off using the past simple, but then changes to the present and the present continuous, which are used throughout the rest of the poem. There is a striking use of the third person singular feminine pronoun she and the object pronoun her, which are used only at the beginning of the poem. This creates a distant effect on behalf of the poet, who then goes into a more personal style using the first person.

Cohesion and Coherence Cohesion

The text, as a characteristic poem, relies on implicit connections instead of using conjunctions to link the clauses. Therefore, we can appreciate a wide use of commas. In general we can see that there are a lot of cross-references by means of pronouns with an anaphoric function and repetition. The author uses a lot of pronouns to avoid the repetition of the referent. In this sense we can appreciate that in stanza 3 the I voice addresses to the Hurricane, which is the referent of the pronoun you (Tell me why you visit). Here we can identify a figure of speech, since he is addressing an inanimate subject. However, the rest of the pronouns are clearly connected with their precedent. It is also remarkable the use of parallelism, the text is full of similar pattern structures, such as: Talk to me Hurricane Talk to me Talk to me Shango Their crusted roots Their cratered graves?

(verb + prep + pron. + noun)

(pos. det. + adj. + noun)

I am aligning myself to you, I am following the movement of your winds, I am riding the mystery of your storm. (subject + verb + DO + complements) The author tries to suggest visual images through the words he chooses to express himself. He achieves so by using words that refer to the senses; for example, the blinding illumination [...] short-circuits us into further darkness, calls our attention through the eyesight and touch; reaping havoc (plays with sound); fearful and reassuring (feelings) This lexicon that appeal to our senses suggesting feelings, images, noises and sensations make us feel closer to the I voice of the poem. We can develop a kind of empathy with her through the connotations of her words.

Coherence

 Poets are often subjective, since they do not usually state things in a clear explicit way, but they usually make people think about what they suggest. Therefore, whilst reading a poem the reader often has to infer some of the meaning. In this sense, and bearing in mind the provided context of the poem, the Hurricane is not just a natural force, but also a reminder of the Caribbean that makes the I voice feel closer to these islands. Following this line, the ship and the ancestral spectre in stanza 1 can recall the Middle Passage (crossing of the Atlantic) of black slaves. Moreover, the trees description in stanza 5 suggests sadness and death, also linked with slave trade, and also to identity in the last part of the poem. As we can see, the poem apparently does not talk about slavery, identity or migration in an explicit way, but the reader gets those ideas through semantic associations that they link with the context.

Style Variation
Dialect In this poem, in contrast with other Caribbean poems, we can not appreciate a strong accent on the speaker nor linguistic features that suggest us that the I voice is Caribbean. Speaking in strict terms, the only Caribbean term that appears in the text is the word Huracan. The spelling of Oh as O is also a non-standard spelling. However, there are some words that although being considered as ordinary standard words, are highly recurrent when talking about the Caribbean, like tree, tropical or hurricane and proper names that refer to this place: Oya and Shango. As seen before, we can find various repetitions in the poem: Talk to me Hurricane Talk to me Talk to me Shango Their crusted roots Their cratered graves? (verb + prep + pron. + noun)

(pos. det. + adj. + noun)

I am aligning myself to you, I am following the movement of your winds, I am riding the mystery of your storm. (subject + verb + DO + complements) That the earth is the earth is the earth

Figurative Speech
Metaphors: The howling ship of the wind (This refers to the Middle Passage) Like some dark ancestral spectre (This refers to slavery) My sweeping, back-home cousin (This, meaning the hurricane) What is the meaning Of old tongues Reaping havoc In new places? (What are old Caribbean hurricanes doing in England?) The blinding illumination, Even as you shortCircuit us Into further darkness? (It brings back hurtful memories) What is the meaning of trees Falling heavy as whales Their crusted roots Their cratered graves? (The destruction brought by the hurricane is compared to uprooting of Africans to America, and at the same time her own situation as an immigrant in England) O why is my heart unchained? (Is it not strange that I feel so liberated) Tropical Oya of the Weather, I am aligning myself to you, I am following the movement of your winds, I am riding the mystery of your storm. (The hurricane is making her remember and feel things from her past in the Caribbean) Ah, sweet mystery, Come to break the frozen lake in me, Shaking the foundations of the very trees within me, Come to let me know That the earth is the earth is the earth (Again, brings back profound memories, and reminds her of her roots and identity)