POETRY COMPARISON ESSAY

Poets John Milton and Raymond Antrobus explore the topic of sensory

disability through their poems ‘On His Blindness’ and ‘Echo’. ‘On His

Blindness’ is a sonnet that shows a blind speaker recognising that despite his

impairment, he can still be of service to God, whilst ‘Echo’ presents to the

audience a struggling deaf speaker in a confusing hearing-world. Both poets

portray themes of religion, ideas about sight and sound, feelings of

connection and detachment, at the same time as an underlying sense of

hope.

To begin with, we must appreciate the structure and appearance of

Antrobus’ ‘Echo’. It is a contemporary, free-form poem which is separated

into five different parts. Due to Antrobus’ authorial concern with deafness

and sign language, each poem has an image of the hand signing which

number poem will be presented next. The significance of the form of the

poem is that the audience can rely not only on the voice of the speaker or

performer, but their actions too. This is important because as a deaf poet,

Antrobus has recognised the importance of using signs to communicate, and

therefore the poem’s meaning wouldn’t make sense if he didn’t provide for a

deaf audience’s needs. The first stanza (marked with one finger in the air) is

a sixteen-line piece which traverses through the speaker’s experience of

sound, or lack of it, and presents to the audience the associations the
speaker has in relation to this subject, providing an apparent solution to their

impairment. This solution is claimed in the poem to be vision, or “light”. 1

Similarly, due to its sonnet form, ‘On His Blindness’ is immediately

significant as to possessing romantic qualities and aesthetic value. The

poem, as other sonnets, is made up of fourteen lines, but does not have the

same standard rhyming structure of ABABCDCDEFEFGG. In fact, the rhyming

scheme is ABBAABBACDECDE. The significance of this irregularity is that it

allows us to recognise a different perspective of a poem to how sonnets are

normally arranged. This different perspective could certainly allude to the

speaker’s blindness, especially in the absence of the ending heroic couplet,

conveying a sense of inability in achieving perfection. This is reflective of the

speaker’s inability to see. Milton himself became blind in 1652, which is

known to be the stimulus for the creation of this poem, before his epic poem

‘Paradise Lost’ in 1667. It is absolutely essential to consider this information

when analysing this poem, as a way of understanding context and authorial

concerns surrounding the poem’s meaning.

Antrobus uses personification in part one of ‘Echo’ to convey a sort of

higher power that rules over the speaker in his situation. He tells us that

“Echo” is the “Goddess of Noise”, emphasising how little the speaker is at

the hands of this disorienting entity which is sound. 2 The alliterative phrases

“blaring birds”, “consonant crumbs” and “dulling doorbells” along with

1
Raymond Antrobus, ‘Echo’, in The Perseverance (London: Penned in the Margins, 2018), p.
13.
2
Antrobus, ‘Echo’, p. 13.
“ravelled knot of tongues” help to convey sound as distracting and intrusive,

something which the speaker is constantly a victim of. 3 This can also be said

for the description of hearing aid tubes as “misty”.4

Sound is portrayed as inaccessible, leaving the information the speaker

should receive as obscured and very difficult to comprehend. The “light”

described at the end of the poem is presented to the audience as

“pulsating”, which is interesting because it has connotations of a heartbeat;

that this light is alive.5 This active concept of light is used to emphasise the

notion of possibility, and with this possibility, hope. The light can also be

interpreted as the introduction of sign language into the speaker and poet’s

life, a solution to his deafness. Using visual descriptions and personification

to characterise sound, this poem is extremely effective in conveying feelings

of disengagement, lack of control and expectant potentiality.

Moreover, the speaker’s impairment in ‘On His Blindness’ is also

characterised by visual description, but this time, used when exploring ideas

about blindness. Our attention is immediately brought to the mentioning of

“light” and “dark” in the first two lines.6 There is a subtle implication of the

world being personified as “dark world and wide”, which portrays to the

audience a sense of being enveloped in darkness, something that the

3
Antrobus, ‘Echo’, p. 13.
4
Antrobus, ‘Echo’, p. 13.
5
Antrobus, ‘Echo’, p. 13.
6
John Milton, ‘On His Blindness’, in The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900, ed. by Arthur Quiller-
Couch (Oxford: Clarendon, 1919), p. 318.
speaker certainly experiences, trapped within his own mind. 7 Death is

therefore a prominent consequence of this darkness, which the speaker goes

on to mention in the third line, which presents the idea that lack of vision

and having this disability could mean that the speaker is only destined for

death as he is “useless”.8 The speaker’s “Talent”, which we assume is his gift

with words, is now wasted on this blind man, the speaker. The concepts of

vision and blindness are thus portrayed in this poem as being what makes a

person eligible for salvation and eternal life; that by staying in this darkness,

perhaps the speaker will sadly not be able to achieve this as he cannot

utilise his talents for the glory of God.

Consequently, when looking at both poems, we must take into account

a central aspect of the narratives; religion. In part one of ‘Echo’, we are

informed of the Spanish architect Gaudí’s work on the cathedral in

Barcelona. Antrobus tells the audience of how the speaker believes Gaudí to

have made the cathedral in order to contain “holy sound”. 9 He then goes on

to proclaim the idea that “Deafness is a kind of Atheism”, due to unhearing

people being unable to receive the Gospel. This is an important motif seen

throughout all parts of ‘Echo’, because it highlights the idea that even

religion is forbidden for deaf people, the path to salvation. Antrobus

emphasises this inequality through the medium of religious imagery. The

striking phrase “golden decibel of angels” is contrasted with “noiseless

7
Milton, ‘On His Blindness’.
8
Milton, ‘On His Blindness’.
9
Antrobus, ‘Echo’, p. 13.
palace” to show that the speaker has found a different way to “answer” or

communicate; through sign.10

Later on, in part five of ‘Echo’, Antrobus uses the Lego tower metaphor

to further emphasise the flaws within the religious system. The speaker says

he will “build a house” and “call it his sanctuary”. 11 The power that the

doctor gives the speaker as a child is probably the first he has experienced.

The speaker narrates to the audience the idea that his deafness is a fortress

or “sanctuary” which closes him off from others. The bricks to this building

are strong and sound-proof enough to even block out the “Good News” in his

grandfather’s sermons.12 The words “saintly silence” creates a reflection of

the parallel between holiness and sound, as in the first part of ‘Echo’. 13 This

is significant because Antrobus clearly wants to highlight the importance of

the inaccessible concept of religion for deaf people.

Lastly, “Babylon’s babbling echoes” is very important as the ending of

this poem because although part five ends the narrative at a positive point

where the doctor finally finds the reason for the problem the speaker is

having, this biblical reference reinforces the concept of religious injustice. 14

“Babylon” in the Oxford English Dictionary is defined as “any large and

luxurious city; esp. one seen as decadent and corrupt (frequently

10
Antrobus, ‘Echo’, p. 13.
11
Antrobus, ‘Echo’, p. 18.
12
Antrobus, ‘Echo’, p. 18.
13
Antrobus, ‘Echo’, p. 18.
14
Antrobus, ‘Echo’, p. 18.
depreciative)”.15 Here, perhaps Antrobus is not calling the “Good News”

Babylonian, or corrupt, but is in fact telling the audience why he saw it as

that when all he could receive were these “babbling echoes”. 16 It appears to

me that Antrobus is exploring deafness in an open, self-reflective way, and is

using religion as a medium through which he can convey the speaker’s

confusion and misunderstanding in the face of his impairment and the

people around him.

However, in ‘On His Blindness’, Milton definitely takes a more positive

approach to religion and centres his poem around the values of Christianity.

The words “Soul”, “Maker” and “Kingly” are capitalised. This is significant to

the reader of the poem because each of these words are linked to the

Catholic faith. The capitalisation of “Soul” conveys to the reader the poet’s

belief of the importance of the human soul, and how only God can save it.

“Maker” clearly alludes to God as the creator, whilst “His state is Kingly” is a

clear reference to God also. The poem acts as a depiction of a vision the

speaker has, in the speaker finding comfort at knowing that despite his

blindness, he can still serve God. The speaker’s darkness is transformed into

bright hope through the “murmur” in the second half of the sonnet, which

through use of dialogue, helps to deliver even more effectively the message

of the poem to the reader.17 Religion is a source of clarity and purpose in ‘On

His Blindness’, rather than the root of misunderstanding in ‘Echo’.

15
Oxford English Dictionary, ‘Babylon’, entry 2, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/14261?
rskey=90Xdr4&result=2#eid [accessed December 21].
16
Antrobus, ‘Echo’, p. 18.
17
Milton, ‘On His Blindness’.
 Additionally, the concept of nature is used in both poems to explore

ideas about these sensory disabilities. In part four of ‘Echo’, the concept of

the sea resonates as the setting throughout the excerpt and shapes the

section as a naturalistically-orientated moment in the overall poem. Antrobus

creates an “underwater” universe as the speaker’s surroundings. 18 The poet

draws connections between “Salacia, Goddess of Salt Water” and the cure

for his impairment.19 He then mentions how the doctors in the poem try to fix

his deafness by syringing “olive oil and salt water” into his ears, implying

that the doctors believed that nature could save him.20

As readers, we know this natural remedy does not save him and of

course he is still deaf. Through use of natural imagery and pagan belief

systems, Antrobus employs a further sense of misunderstanding and

mistreatment of the speaker’s condition. Milton also draws connections with

the subject of blindness and nature, as “Land and Ocean” are used to convey

the omnipotence of God through the work of his followers. 21 In ‘Echo’ and ‘On

His Blindness’, nature is used by the speakers to challenge and examine the

subject of their own impairments.

Furthermore, identity is a concept used in both ‘Echo’ and ‘On His

Blindness’ to convey ideas about disability and how the speakers define

themselves. Part two of ‘Echo’ is structured into five sections, each section

18
Antrobus, ‘Echo’, p. 17.
19
Antrobus, ‘Echo’, p. 17.
20
Antrobus, ‘Echo’, p. 17.
21
Milton, ‘On His Blindness’.
preceded by the word “What?” in italics.22 In this section, the speaker

identifies himself as “a one-word question. A one-man patience test.” 23 We

are also informed of the foundations of the speaker’s identity in part three of

‘Echo’, when the speaker clears out his “dead father’s flat”, the sound of his

voice at two-years-old with the same impairment and now the speaker with

hearing aids.24 In ‘On His Blindness’, the speaker describes himself and his

talent as “useless” and with a “bent soul”. 25 This portrays the speakers’

impairments as hindrances in the face of the rest of society, and how their

disabilities become a part of their identities.

To conclude, Milton’s sonnet ‘On His Blindness’ and Antrobus’ freeform

poem ‘Echo’ use language, themes, poetic form and ideas about identity to

explore the sensory disabilities which are blindness and deafness. Both

poems pull the reader or audience in to share the emotions experienced by

the speakers, but at points also drive the receivers away, through distancing

themselves from the seeing and hearing world. Overall, the poems

implement feelings of misunderstanding, injustice and most importantly,

hope, in the instance of dealing with disability and impairments.

COMMENTARY

In this poetry module, I have learned a new set of skills as well as

changing my perception of a piece when I first try to understand it. A very

22
Antrobus, ‘Echo’, pp. 14 – 15.
23
Antrobus, ‘Echo’, p. 14.
24
Antrobus, ‘Echo’, p. 16.
25
Milton, ‘On His Blindness’.
important development of my approach to analysing poetry in this course

has been the act of embodying the poem. I am now able to examine the

poem considering also the contextual and authorial motivations behind its

most obvious meanings, to find a deeper or more personal one. This process

involves reading the poem through the first time, but then reading it aloud.

This allows me as a speaker to not only understand the poem, but to

experience it flowing naturally from my body, as poetry should.

Aside from this, the poetry module has allowed me to adapt other

skills, which all aid my attitude to analysing poetry. From the first week,

when we were studying poetry about Mile End and London, I was able to use

my own knowledge of these places, with which I am quite familiar to assist in

my understanding of the poems. As a reader or audience, this first week has

helped me to grasp the notion of identifying the familiarities in a poem: what

makes you feel connected to the people or subject in the poem and what

makes you feel detached.

Additionally, a very prominent part of the module has been focusing on

relationship with the senses. I think that from week two, since we learned

about ‘Seeing, Hearing and Feeling’, we became more aware of the

importance of human senses when approaching poetry. The skills I learned

include thinking about dialogue and absence of sound in the poems, the

significance of spaces and punctuation, and the visual form of the poem

itself on paper. Utilising these skills, it not only made the subject topics for

the next few weeks easier to approach, but also the module as a whole,
along with the performance. The awareness of sensation especially helped

me in my understanding of the poems from the deaf and disabled poets’

anthology Stairs and Whispers.

A challenge I faced throughout the module was approaching a poem’s

subject of which I had a lack of knowledge, and occurred when we studied

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s poem ‘Elitere: Lyric Poetry’ from DICTEE in week

ten. I was confused at first to read passages in French and found it

disorienting to read a poem in such fragmented sentences. Yet, after

discussing it in the seminar and reading the poem aloud, we were able to

understand that the poem was about a turbulent thought process of

changing cultures and languages due to Cha’s personal experiences as well

as combating this situation through appreciation for strong women in history.

In conclusion, I think that both my approach to and appreciation for

poetry has definitely developed to the point where I am instantaneously

more aware of the markers I need to identify. The skills I have learned from

this module will be helpful when looking at any genre of literature, poetic or

not.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Antrobus, Raymond, ‘Echo’, in The Perseverance (London: Penned in the

Margins, 2018), pp. 13 – 19
Milton, John, ‘On His Blindness’, in The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–
1900, ed. by Arthur Quiller-Couch (Oxford: Clarendon, 1919), p. 318

Oxford English Dictionary, ‘Babylon’, entry 2,

http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/14261?rskey=90Xdr4&result=2#eid
[accessed December 21]