Poetry Feature: Maya Angelou
April is National Poetry Month and was established in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets. In honor of this, we will be creating a blog feature every week in April that is focused on a prominent female poet who has challenged, shaped, and created the culture of our society.
To all the female poets, we thank you, we support you and we encourage you as you continue to encourage us with your words, stories, and vulnerability.
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
She is most commonly known for her work I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969). Angelou is a storyteller, a writer, a poet, and much more. Her work has inspired creatives for decades and will continue to do so. It would be a never-ending list if we were to attempt to acknowledge all of her accomplishments, both personal and academic. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1928 and passed in 2014 at the age of 86. We will be highlighting her work Still I Rise, which is a poem from her third volume of poetry published in 1978. Her work has a heavy focus on the strength of women, Black beauty, and resilience. She boldly acknowledges her race and gender throughout her work and seeks to be a voice for those who may have felt or feel that they don’t have one.
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.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
Maya Angelou, "Still I Rise" from And Still I Rise: A Book of Poems. Copyright © 1978 by Maya Angelou. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Source: The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (1994)