Still I Rise
Maya Angelou

Community Comments

Sara Brant, Book Club Guide

There are few poems that garner such a visceral response from me -- and this after more than three decades of reading poetry concertedly. What is it about this poem that brings my blood to boil? Part of it, I think, is that Angelou writes the "you" of the poem as if it were me -- as if I were the one upset by her sassiness, as if I were the one who wanted to see her broken. And since I know that's not how I feel, the poem turns for me and I become part of the poet's posse, part of the angry accusors thwarting injustice with joy and sex and ancestral gifts and rising, still and all.

From out of Angelou's dust,

- How do you feel about the poems rhyme scheme?

- Do you feel like you join her by the end...do you rise?

- Does this poem's theme still resonate today as it might have in the late 1970s when it was first published?

Audrey Metcalfe, '90 Retired Mental Health Counselor

Ms. Angelou's poem touches me deeply and no small part of the power of this poem is the rhyme. We read this poem at a Passover seder. Everyone sat silently for minutes afterward and then someone said softly, "Wow." I think this poem speaks to those who want to hear the message, today and forever. I started out listening to this poem written by an African-American women and thinking how it applied to African-Americans but ended up knowing that it also applied to me. This poem makes me want to soar, being a woman and an older woman at that.

Audrey Metcalfe, '90 Retired Mental Health Counselor

Ms. Angelou's poem touches me deeply and no small part of the power of this poem is the rhyme. We read this poem at a Passover seder. Everyone sat silently for minutes afterward and then someone said softly, "Wow." I think this poem speaks to those who want to hear the message, today and forever. I started out listening to this poem written by an African-American women and thinking how it applied to African-Americans but ended up knowing that it also applied to me. ?This poem makes me want to soar, being a woman and an older woman at that. ?

Questions?

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