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Literary criticism of maya angelou poems
Literary criticism of maya angelou poems
Brief history of maya angelou
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“On the Pulse of Morning” by Maya Angelou
"On the Pulse of Morning," is a poem written by Maya Angelou. In this poem, Angelou depicts personification. Personification is an element of literature in which an object or an animal is given human characteristics. Angelou uses personification to give the rock, the river, and the tree the ability to speak to the reader.
In "On the Pulse of Morning", Angelou writes " But today, the rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully, Come, you may stand upon my back and face your distant destiny, but seek no haven in my shadow." In this, personification is given to the rock, implying that it can "cry out". It gives the illusion that the rock is talking to the person and telling them that it is there for the person to use as "ground" to stand on, but n...
7. The personification in the second stanza is that she gives poems the ability to hide and are waiting to be found. The author states that poems are hiding in the bottom of your shoes, and they are the shadows drifting across your ceiling before you wake up. This is personification because she gives the poems traits that only a living organism can possess.
In the play And When We Awoke There Was Light and Light by Laura Jacqmin, she analyzes the ethical issues revolving around service in America. The main character Katie, struggles with this common ethical issue just like all other Americans when making a life decision that challenges one’s morals. Katie struggles with conflicting messages about service, not being fully committed to helping David, her pen pal from Uganda and then realizing in the end that David is more important than Harvard.
When I read poetry, I often tend to look first at its meaning and second at how it is written, or its form. The mistake I make when I do this is in assuming that the two are separate, when, in fact, often the meaning of poetry is supported or even defined by its form. I will discuss two poems that embody this close connection between meaning and form in their central use of imagery and repetition. One is a tribute to Janis Joplin, written in 1983 by Alice Fulton, entitled “You Can’t Rhumboogie in a Ball and Chain.” The second is a section from Walt Whitman’s 1,336-line masterpiece, “Song of Myself,” first published in 1855. The imagery in each poem differs in purpose and effect, and the rhythms, though created through repetition in both poems, are quite different as well. As I reach the end of each poem, however, I am left with a powerful human presence lingering in the words. In Fulton’s poem, that presence is the live-hard-and-die-young Janis Joplin; in Whitman’s poem, the presence created is an aspect of the poet himself.
In the beginning, Blanco descriptively writes how the sun rises every morning over our rooftops as it enters our windows. He goes on to describe the movements behind the windows, which I believe are our shadows. Blanco goes through the routine of Americans when they wake up: they yawn, look in the mirror, and hear the sound of automobiles outside. Blanco moves from general to personal. He makes the poem personal and involves his mother who worked as a cashier for 20 years, so that he can be able to get an education and “write this poem” (7).
... is the most important line in the poem. I think the author used personification here to make the image clearer to the reader, and help them make the connection from the line to life. The line gives the idea that the author has had to overcome his own struggles in life, and is describing how it felt in this poem.
Ravikovitch uses an analogy for the overall poem. Comparing rocks to people. She uses this analogy to show that a person can be hurt, but never show it, then one day crack and crumble. Just like a rock will sit there for years, and suddenly crack. Within the poem, she uses metaphors, such as, “the rock has an open wound,” comparing the rocks crack to an open wound, showing the similarities between humans and rocks. Ravikovitch uses repetition of the word years in the first part of the poem to emphasize that a rock can go so long appearing to be unharmed, even for years, until they finally get a crack, as well as with people. She also uses personification. Ravikovitch personifies the rock to show the similarity between rocks and people, and how two things that are so different, can be so similar. The overall message that Ravikovitch is trying to convey, is that even though rocks are tough, they still crack, as do people. A person can be hurt but never show it, then all of a sudden crumble. Even the strongest boulders have cracks.
The narrator thinks about the rock and the connections it has to the rest of the world and the universe. Those same motions that went into the rock are the same motions that went into human beings. This thought begins to overwhelm the narrator in the next few lines: “thought all the interweaving / motions / into myself: dropped / the stone to dead rest:” (Ammons 18-21). The narrator drops the stone after the last thought because it became too much for him to comprehend. A lot of people tend to shy away from the thought of space and the unknown causing us to focus on what we need and not what is best for the world. Even the smallest things we do to the environment can cause a change which can later become bigger problems in life. In the next few lines, Ammons shows that even something as simple as dropping a rock can disrupt nature: “the stream from other motions / broke / rushing over it: / shelterless“ (Ammons 22-25). When the narrator dropped the rock he had caused the stream to engulf the rock. Nature is very unforgiving and if we destroy it to the point where the world is unable to sustain life, then nature will find a way and continue on as if we were never
"Angelou, Maya (née Marguerite Annie Johnson)." Encyclopedia of African-american Writing. Amenia: Grey House Publishing, 2009. Credo Reference. Web. 12 March 2014.
In her essay, “Momma, the Dentist, and me” Maya Angelou describe her insight in remembering an incident of racism. The incident refer to a time when a white dentist named Lincoln did not treat her tooth ace just for being colored “Niggah.” In America no one should be allowed to be a form of prisoner, because of their native skin color. Americans should be held accountable for their actions whenever a color person are in need of help their social life. There should be laws ordinances to prohibit persons from confronting -either verbally or physically -color people for not being a Caucasian person. This conflict in rights between those held by color people and the American people those held by, because American refused freedom rights, endanger lives, and economic issues.
Ms. Angelou's rhetorical strategy of comparison and contrast serves as effectively as her brilliant, flowing sentences sprinkled with colorful simile and imagery. Poetic phrases describing a voice "like a river diminishing to a stream, and then a trickle" or the audience's conditioned responses as "Amen's and Yes, sir's began to fall around the room like rain through a ragged umbrella" paint vivid images.
Poem, hymn or combination of the two, “Rock of Ages” is a brilliantly designed and masterfully executed recipe for salvation. Whether a person is in the prime of life or on the brink of death, this work of art was intended to serve everyone. It touches on the unapproachability of God apart from a mediator, it brings up double imputation, it shows the futility of our own works in securing salvation, it foretells God’s righteous judgment on the last day and in the end it provides hope in salvation. In conclusion, as Toplady would agree, Christ is the rock and in his cleft, we find salvation. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (The Holy Bible, John.
Maya Angelou, a poet and award-winning author, is highly known for her symbolic and life-experienced stories. In her poem Men, she shows the theme of men domination over women, through her personal struggle. She makes her writing appealing and direct to the reader. With the use of various literary devices (similes, metaphor, imagery, and symbolism), sentence length, and present to past tense it helps the readers understand the overall theme in Men.
Rising Up in Still I Rise by Maya Angelou ? Still I Rise? by Maya Angelou is directed towards blacks on how to be proud of their ancestry, themselves, and their overall appearance. The poem is a special and motivating poem that African-Americans (and other races for that matter) should read and take to heart. According to African-Americans, Maya Angelou states that no matter what white Americans (slave owners) say or do to African-Americans (slaves) they can still rise up to make a better life for themselves and their race as a whole.
Comparing Life Doesn't Frighten Me and Still I Rise by Maya Angelou This essay will compare and contrast 'life doesn't frighten' me by Maya Angelou and 'Still I Rise' by Maya Angelo on the theme of fear and. pride will be explored in this essay. The theme of fear and pride is discussed in this essay because in one of the poems she is scared of little things that scare and there is nothing to be scared of like the dark, but in the other poem pride is the theme because she is proud of her color. One of the main similarities between the texts is that the poems both use the same repetition.
Marguerite Anne Johnson, better known as Maya Angelou, was born on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. She was born and raised in an era that involved the Great Depression and World War I. When her parents divorced at a young age, she and her brother were sent to live with her grandmother in a heavily racially segregated Stamps , Arkansas. She found solace in her brother, Bailey, in the hard times produced by the South. This segregation was severe in this era, especially for shy young Marguerite. Throughout her childhood, she was sent from her grandmother to her father and mother. All these different environments exposed Angelou to a series of experiences including: racism, segregation, music, and politics. These experiences were most likely what prompted her to chronicle her life through autobiographical works as well as poems. In these works, Angelou utilizes elements such as literary devices, poetic devices, allusions, recurring themes and symbols to portray