Poetry Presentation, fall 2007
LITR 5731:
Seminar in American Multicultural Literature
Poetry Presentation, fall 2007
Thursday, 6 September: continue Classic Slave Narratives; begin Song of Solomon, chapters 1 & 2 (through p. 55)
Poetry: Maya Angelou, "Still I Rise"
Poetry reader / discussion leader: Patricia (Pat) Dixon
During my review of the many articles and essays written about Maya Angelou, the article that I found most helpful was “Maya Angelou”, in Contemporary Authors Online.
I have chosen to focus on the seamier side of her past rather than her successes that crowned her later life. Ms. Angelou’s story is one of resilience and accomplishment in the face of adversity. Like Mary Prince and Harriet Jacobs before her, Maya Angelou faced a world that offered her no choices and, yet, like these extraordinary women, she escaped slavery not once but many times. She escaped, not just slavery of the body, but of the mind and spirit and her works reflect the resilience of the Negro race and traces it from its darkest roots as an enslaved people into a still darker present where African Americans are seeking to enslave and victimize each other for profit and personal perversion. Maya Angelou manages to rise above her circumstances to become, not only a great poet, but a secure and confident Black woman as well.
Maya Angelou, (pronounced “Ahn-ge-low”) was born Marguerite Annie Johnson, April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, MO. She witnessed and experiences in her short life---including rape at the hands of one of her mother’s boyfriends---that left her mute for six years after he was killed by her uncles However, it is the unusual choices that Maya Angelou made that had, I believe, the greatest effect on her life and poetry. She became both a Madam and, later, a prostitute to one of her boyfriends and it took the violence of her brother to get her out of this situation. . These are just a few examples of the defining moments in this woman’s journey to success. Maya Angelou faced the worst of herself and found, under the mire of failure, a rose of promise.. As 2006 poetry reader/discussion leader, Karen Hrametz states, “Still I Rise” reflects the poet’s journey through difficult times and her will to survive and to thrive.”
While I agree with Hrametz and other writers who have analyzed this poem, I feel that many of them have missed the basic, elemental understanding central to the poem’s theme. This fundamental lack of understanding has caused many of them to assume, incorrectly, that the author is only speaking metaphorically.
I have done a stanza by stanza breakdown of the poem that is attached on the following page. However, for the purposes of class discussion, I have compared the poem, “Still, I Rise” to the topic of the “American Dream” vs. “The Dream” as written by Rev. Martin Luther King (Course objective 3).
The vibrant prose and imagery of this poem is reflective of the “American Dream” in which the poem’s speaker consistently uses traditional immigrant expectations to form the basis of the poem’s movement. Expressions like: “oil wells pumping in my living room”, “‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines/ Diggin’ in my own back yard”, “That I dance like I’ve got diamonds/ At the meeting of my thighs?” These are the traditional expectations of immigrants coming to America to realize the American dream. The poet has taken these traditional images and tied them to issues of personal pride, self identity, and racial identity. The message here is: I am just like you. However, the focus of all of the imagery is tied to the earth and to regeneration and renewal. Ms. Angelou has tied the resilience of the black race to the richness and eternality of the sun, earth, moon, and air. These images of unchanging, ceaseless endurance in the face of oppression give the poem a purposeful strength. The message is clear: I am like you, but my riches come from inside of me and I can not be destroyed. These images of wealth of the spirit tie into “The Dream” speech by Dr. King in that the speaker’s imagery of wealth is tied to areas of self-worth and self-determination. The things that the speaker values are different: self-respect, pride, endurance, and perseverance in the face of oppression.
The poetry of Maya Angelou and the Slave Narratives has in common the theme of self determination. In the case of Fredrick Douglass, his sense of inevitability that he would one day be free speaks deeply to his audiences, both past and present. The speaker in Maya Angelou’s poem, “Still, I Rise” also reflects the assimilation into the dominant culture while also presenting a picture of resistance.
How is their assimilation into American culture reflected both in his writings and in the poem by Maya Angelou?
How do these writings reflect their resistance to the dominant culture and how is this contrasted to their perception of the dominant culture?
Hrametz, from her discussion of this poem, states, “Angelou challenges the reader to abandon old stereotypes, and to acknowledge instead her pride, success, and comfort in her sexuality. She understands that importance of her role as a voice for all African Americans, and the power of words to spread that voice like a “black ocean, leaping and wide.” “Still, I Rise” restates the message that is apparent in all of her written work.
How does the imagery in the poem reflect both assimilation and resistance?
Do the primary images in the poem reflect greater assimilation into the dominant culture or resistance to it?
How does the speaker’s voice suggest assimilation rather than resistance?
Comprehensive Analysis
Course objective 1c: voiceless and choiceless: Maya Angelou has been both. Her upbringing and the social climate in the town of Stamps, AK where she was raised would have given her plenty of understanding of the plight of her slave ancestors.
In stanza one, when she states, “You may write me down in history/with your bitter twisted lies/You may trod me in the very dirt/But still, like dust, I’ll rise”. She is experienced with the same hatred that the slaves faced. Also, her victimization at the hands of her mother’s boyfriend left her, literally, voiceless for six years. In all instances, she has risen from the ashes of her former self, like the Phoenix, into a better self. The images of wealth begin in the second stanza and pervade the poem from this point to its end and are reflected in the speaker’s sense of self and racial pride and identity.
The second stanza deals with another classic stereotype of the American black or slave. It was the height of disrespect for a slave or Negro to be considered sassy. This was the ultimate affront to whites; that a black person would walk with dignity. I am sure that the people of Stamps, AK talk differently about Maya Angelou in her current incarnation rather than the silent black child who had to leave their town because of the racial climate of during her childhood.
The third stanza gives the speaker a sense of eternality. She is a force of nature that cannot be stopped or evaded. The imagery here is reflected in eternal images of sun, moon, and tides. These images reflect an unchanging, ceaseless, movement that cannot be stopped until the ending of the earth itself and brings with a sense of inevitability.
The fourth stanza returns to the same questioning tone of the second stanza, but the difference here is that the speaker’s rhetorical questions represent the typical expectation and, unfortunate reality, of what many slaves experienced. She is taunting her listeners---both black and white---they have not been able to conquer her; not through slavery, prostitution, or false delusions that she needed a man to become a fully realized human being.
The fifth stanza, while it begins with a question, basically continues the declarations of the poem’s theme of inevitability, it also, for the first time, expresses, I believe, many of the author’s own personal experiences. These are the reactions Maya would have faced almost daily in her home town and many of the places she lived throughout her life.
The sensitive girl, and later the young woman, would have had her soul killed by prostitution, rape, and having to live in the confines of a life with the ability of self-expression silenced. This follows course objective 5a and 5c. Maya Angelou used literacy as a primary code to a modern existence free of oppression and as a path to empower herself and she gave greater opportunities to herself, her son, and to all who read her powerful, autobiographical books.
Her story parallels the “American Dream” (Course objective3). The poem and her books were a stepping stone to success. Her life history empowered many women to seek empowerment through literacy and education. In the same sense of fellow feeling that pervades the motivated to say of the motivator, “If she can do it, so can I.” The use of atypical word and phrases (course objective 5d) emphasizes that the speaker is not of traditional Caucasian decent.
The sixth stanza continues the imagery of wealth through identity. “Dancing like I have diamonds at the meeting of my thighs”, is meant to both shock the white listener and delight the black one. It speaks to the very heart of the slave and his descendents and it says: I know who I am. I am the descendent of royalty. I know it and you remember it. This is a bold statement from a woman of slave ancestry and it says I am not what you have tried to make me-----a slave, a whore, a prostitute----same game; different name; all the same. The final stanza is a return to the sense of inevitability and incommutability of the speaker. Here she is not speaking for just herself anymore; she is speaking for her entire race. We have it all; the patience, endurance, strength, faith, and power of all those who can before us and we will only get better and better through time.
“Still, I Rise”, like “The Dream” speech of Rev. Martin Luther King, expresses our commonality with those around us while reminding them, and ourselves, that we are different. What we see and how we feel has been, and continues to be shaped by, our history as an enslaved people seeking to find common ground in the land of our oppression and that past still shapes our present and, will continue to shape, our future.