Comparisons play a key role in “Still I Rise,” because they are universal tools that help emphasize the meaning of everything from the joys of being a woman to the feeling of being rich. Another defining aspect of Angelou’s work is her use of figurative language, especially similes and metaphors. This format is present in “Still I Rise” as well as most of her other poems.
#Maya angelou poems still i rise meaning free#
This, in addition to civil rights, was one of the most common topics Angelou wrote about.ĭespite her sheer lack of consistency with writing in a specific structure, one of the loose generalizations that can be made about the way Angelou liked to write was that her free verse style typically consisted of a few quatrains mixed in with long stanzas of no patterned arrangement whatsoever. Angelou’s poems “They Went Home,” “Phenomenal Woman,” “Men,” “Woman Work,” and “Momma Welfare Roll” all focus on the subject of women and gender relations. The narrator is a woman, and her comments directed at combatting racism include a secondary message that women who are in the same situation as she is should have the right to feel powerful and confident no matter what the situation at hand may be. This is present throughout all of “Still I Rise” until the last stanza, and is also present in Angelou’s poems “Phenomenal Woman,” “Woman Work,” “Million Man March Poem,” “Equality,” and “Human Family.” An underlying subject matter that may not be apparent at first glance is that of feminism. When looking at a range of her work, it can be concluded that she typically arranged her poems loosely around the abcb rhyme scheme, with some gaps depending on the poem. In addition to the common theme that Angelou utilized throughout her poetry, there are other elements of “Still I Rise” that make this poem indicative of being the best representation of Angelou as a poet her work has to offer. The majority of her poems were based on the theme that racism is a force to be reckoned with that must be fought against by people taking a stand.
This is one of the main reasons why “Still I Rise” is the best representation of her work as a whole: because civil rights were one of the most honorable causes that she supported in her life.
She organized benefits centered on her work as an actress and a director that would fund civil rights groups (“Maya Angelou Biography”). Equality is a common subject that Angelou incorporated in her poems because she was an avid civil rights activist her entire life. To summarize the poem, Angelou focuses most of the stanzas on mocking the efforts of the racist people (to whom her poem is addressing) that were intended to destroy her as a person, only to retaliate with the fact that they made her stronger as a person in her fight to achieve equality for African-Americans.
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