Both poems delight in the physical closeness of the beloved. Both poems embrace the joys of sexual love without embarrassment or apology for time taken from other tasks.
Barrett Browning is more reserved, idealized, and romantic in her detailing of the passion she feels for the beloved and the longing she has for physical contact. The poem concludes with the claim that when the beloved is near, all thought ends as the lovers embrace:
Because, in this deep joy to see and hear theeAnd breathe within thy shadow a new air,I do not think of thee—I am too near thee.
Nagra offers a more modern and more whimsical portrait of romantic love as he details moments of passion stolen from an immigrant's grocery shop. In this poem, the contrast between the erotic encounters upstairs and the withering produce downstairs creates a gently comic and indulgent affirmation of the young speaker's love. The dialect creates a youthful and energetic sense of desire:
but ven nobody in, I do di lock—
cos up di stairs is my newly bride vee share in chapatti vee share in di chutney after vee hav made luv like vee rowing through Putney . . . .
The speaker exudes an engaging charm and openness as he describes his thoughts of his bride, in all her appeal as well as her very human traits:
my bride she hav a red crew cut and she wear a Tartan sari a donkey jacket and some pumps on di squeak ov di girls dat are pinching my sweeties . . . .
This bride, he concludes, is "priceless." This ineffable love in all its commonness feels palpable due to the unadorned voice used in this poem.
"Singh Song!" is a deeply honest and confessional poem. The speaker is talking about his wife as honestly and openly as he can. He does not directly call her beautiful, and he describes her looks without sparing any details, even saying her stomach is like that of a teddy bear.
However, you can tell that he is in love with her and constantly distracted by the thought of her, just as Elizabeth Barrett Browning is with the subject in "Sonnet 29." In Nagra's poem, the speaker's store is a mess because of the distraction of his love, with old milk, empty shelves, and moldy bread.
However, he can't bring himself to stay in the store from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. like he is supposed to, and every time there is a chance, he rushes upstairs to be with his wife.
Though Browning gives us far less detail in her poem, she also describes that longing to be with someone special and the shifting of priorities as one person becomes more important than daily chores.
In "Singh Song," a poem by Daljit Nagra, the speaker uses dialect to describe his relationship with his wife and how it relates to his job in a store that he owns and manages. He describes going upstairs to spend time with his wife, which seems pleasant, and then going back down to the store to hear customers complaining about the prices or the cleanliness of the store. It seems that he'd rather be thinking of his wife or spending time with her than tending to the store. At the end of the poem, he tells his wife that the moon only costs half as much as she does, answering her question and using the analogy of the store and its pricing system to describe their love. When she asks how much that costs, he says "Is priceless baby." This closing line tells us how much the speaker values his wife.
In Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Sonnet 29," she uses lots of figurative language to describe her thoughts of her beloved. Browning says that her "thoughts do twine and bud / About [him], as wild vines about a tree" (lines 1–2). The remainder of the sonnet develops the idea that the speaker's thoughts are totally consumed by the beloved.
In terms of the style, Nagra's poem is much less formal and traditional than Browning's. Nagra's language is like that of the everyday Punjabi man and tries to capture his accent. He describes an everyday experience with his wife and at his job. Browning, on the other hand, uses a very traditional poem structure in the sonnet. This poem must follow strict rules for meter and rhyme. The poem is much shorter and more contained than Nagra's. Ultimately, though, both speakers describe their feelings toward and constant thinking about their beloveds.
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