Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou detailed analysis

 

Phenomenal woman

Maya Angelou

(1928-2014)

About the author

¨ Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American poet, singer, memoirist and civil rights activist.

¨ She has penned 7 autobiographies, 3 books of essays, several books of poetry and a number of plays, movies and television shows

¨ In her autobiographies, Angelou documents the discrimination and racism she experienced during her youth.

¨ Angelou continued to write and published her acclaimed autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in 1970.

¨ “On the pulse of morning” is the poem read at President Bill Clinton’s presidential inauguration. She became the second poet to do so.

Works

¨ I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

¨ Gather together in my name (1974)

¨ Singin’ & Swingin’ & Getting’ Merry like Christmas (1949)

¨ The Heart of a Woman (1981)

¨ All God’s Children need Traveling Shoes

¨ A song Flung up to Heaven (2002)

¨ Mom & Me &Mom (2013)

¨ And Still I Rise(1978)

¨ Phenomenal Woman (1995)

¨ On the Pulse of Morning (1993)

¨ Letter to my Daughter (2008)

¨ Life doesn’t frighten me (1993)

Phenomenal woman  was published the volume And Still I Rise (1978)

¨ Maya Angelou was proud of herself and wanted the world to see it, she was not afraid of speaking in the public, she used to offer talks to help the victims of racial  discrimination

¨ In the poem, Angelou speaks as a confident woman. She wants to show the world what makes her beautiful and she expresses it in various ways

¨ The poem rejects the narrow societal notion of women and proposes an alternative perspective on what defines real beauty.

¨ Confidence and comfort in one’s own skin the speaker insists are the markers of true beauty and thus the poem offers an empowering message for all women.

POEM

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.

I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size

But when I start to tell them,

They think I’m telling lies.

I say,

It’s in the reach of my arms,

The span of my hips,

The stride of my step,

The curl of my lips.

I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.

I walk into a room

Just as cool as you please,

And to a man,

The fellows stand or

Fall down on their knees.

Then they swarm around me,

A hive of honey bees.

I say,

It’s the fire in my eyes,

And the flash of my teeth,

The swing in my waist,

And the joy in my feet.

I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.

What they see in me.

They try so much

But they can’t touch

My inner mystery.

When I try to show them,

They say they still can’t see.

I say,

It’s in the arch of my back,

The sun of my smile,

The ride of my breasts,

The grace of my style.

I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.

 

Now you understand

Just why my head’s not bowed.

I don’t shout or jump about

Or have to talk real loud.

When you see me passing,

It ought to make you proud.

I say,

It’s in the click of my heels,

The bend of my hair,

the palm of my hand,

The need for my care.

’Cause I’m a woman

Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.

EXPLANATION

¨ Phenomenal Woman is a lyrical poem that sends out an important message to the world of convention and stereotype: empowerment comes from being confident in your own female skin, no matter if you are not seen as cute or fashionable by the masses.

¨ Maya Angelou published this poem in 1978 when it appeared in And Still I Rise, a collection of powerful poems that set many an oppressed woman free. 

¨ Phenomenal Woman is a direct and passionate poem the speaker's narration contains the seed of self-knowing, of self-confidence.

¨ Maya Angelou claims that “Beauty is even more than skin deep”. It comes with confidence and self esteem

Style and Theme

¨ Ballad in free verse

¨ No conventional rhyme

¨ Direct personal voice

¨ Themes  are individuality, self acceptance and self confidence.

¨ The poem can be considered as a discourse commenting on social outlook towards gender and sexuality, and is commonly regarded as a tribute to womanhood. The poet asserts that the looks alone do not define beauty, but it is the whole of human character and disposition that constitute for its parameters.

 

Figure of Speech

a.   Refrain: Repetition of  lines

b.   Imagery: Use of vivid descriptive language to add depth

c.   Irony:

d.   Asyndaton: A figure of speech in which one or several forms of conjunctions are omitted from a series of related clauses.

e.   Ephanophora:  a rhetorical device consisting of repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive sentences. The phrase beginning with ‘the’ is being repeated in the same position

f.     Epiphora: repetition of same word at the end of successive phrases/ clauses/ sentences. It is the counterpart of Anaphora. It is extremely emphatic device because of the emphasis placed on the last word in a phrase/ sentence.

g.   Metaphor

h.   Personification

Questions

¨ Real name of Maya Angelou

¨ Her famous autobiography

¨ How many  lines in the poem

¨ Fill in blanks: they try so much but they cant touch -------

¨ When was the poem published and in which volume of poetry

¨ Opening word of the opening line

¨ Theme of the poem

¨ What makes a woman phenomenal?

¨ What is the tone of the poem

 

This is a photograph of me by Margaret Atwood critical analysis

 

This is a photograph of me

It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;

then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.

In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.

(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.

I am in the lake, in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.

It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion

but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)

From The Circle Game by Margaret Atwood. 

 

Margaret Atwood

The Canadian writer Margaret Atwood (born 1939) is best known as novelist, as the author of books such as Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake

·      The poem opens The Circle Game, Atwood’s 1964 collection of poetry

·      Free Verse

·      Describes a blurry photo to the audience, the image implications  continuously transforms

·      Means of exploring the malleability of history and truth, especially suppression of marginalized voices

·      Sets stage for The Circle Game which centres female perspectives and experiences that have long been subsumed under male-dominated histories

·      The form of the poem mirrors ever changing nature of history

Summary

·      The speaker describes an old photograph from many years ago

·      Upon the first glance, the image appears blurry with all of its fuzzy shapes mingling on the photo paper

·      The poet first points out a fragment f an evergreen tree that creeps into the frame from one of its left corners

·      To its right is an incline, halfway up the incline is a little house whose weight is supported by a wooden frame

·      Background of the image is a lake, behind which sits the short hills

·      The speaker clams in a parenthetical statement to have drowned the day before the photo was taken

·      The speaker takes the reader’s attention towards the centre of the lake, where the speaker lies lifeless beneath its surface

·      The speaker explains it is hard to make out the corpse’s form, its size and position

·      The speaker maintains that if the audience contemplates the photo for a while, they will be able to spot the speaker in the photo.

Themes

History and Erasure

·      Initially the photo has  a blurry image then various detail and quaint landscape emerge

·      Halfway through the poem the speaker’s corpse is pictured

·      Narrative is dark and complex

·      Soft language “ gentle slope” “small frame house” “low hills”

·      Corpse is submerged within the lake denotes that the speaker’s experience has been obscured

·      One could figure out the corpse only after immense observation means that complicated realities of the past are harder to discern

·      Reflection of light ff the lake – a distortion denotes that suffering of marginalized people can be easily left out

·      Speaker’s form is at the center of the photo just under the lake’s surface denotes that such obscured stories are central to understanding the past and can be accessed.

The Subjectivity of truth

Throughout the poem, the speaker provides commentary on the photo and calls attention to particular details, shifting reader’s understanding of what the photo represents. One’s concept of truth is based on perception. Truth is unfixed and easily manipulated.

History

Atwood’s “this is a Photograph of me” is based on a shocking story of  a drowned child. As the title suggest the collection revolves around children’s circle game. The tone of the poem reveals many tensions and dualities.

Poem itself is the Photograph

The poem itself is the photograph that the poet wants to show, scansion is the jargon for analyzing poetic metre, the poet wishes the audience to scan the poem.

·      26 lines

·      14 lines describe thee photo

·      Remaining 12 lines depicts poet’s intention in writing this poem.

 

 

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, By EMILY DICKINSON detailed summary and critical analysis

 

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

By EMILY DICKINSON

Emily Dickenson (1830-1886)

•        American poet

•        Lived in isolation, developed a penchant for white clothing and her reluctance to meet anyone

•        Dickenson was a prolific poet, only 10/1800 poems were published during her lifetime

•        The poems published were edited to fit conventional poetic rules.

•        Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality

Structure and syntax

•        The extensive use of dashes and unconventional capitalization in Dickenson’s manuscripts and the idiosyncratic vocabulary and imagery.

•        Dickenson avoids pentameter, opting more generally for trimeter and tetrameter

•        Twentieth century scholars are deeply interested by Dickenson’s highly individual use of punctuation and lineation

•        Dickenson’s poetry frequently uses humour, puns, irony and satire.

•        Some of the poems are

•        Flowers and gardens

•        The master poems

•        Gospel poems

•        The Undiscovered continent

•        Like Emerson, Thoreau  and Whitman, she experimented with expression in order to free it from conventional restraints

•        Like Charlotte Bronte and Elizabeth Browning, she crafted new type of persona for the first person

•        Dickenson created her writing in elliptical language for expressing what was possible but not yet realized.

Poem

I measure every grief I meet

The Savior must have been a docile Gentleman

A Man may make a remark

I tie my Hat- I crease my shawl

Safe in their Alabaster Chambers

One sister have I in our house

Knows how to forget

Besides the Autumn poets sing

I am Nobody! Who are you

I taste a liquor never brewed

The soul selects her society

I heard a fly buzz

Because I could not stop for death

Hope is the thing with feathers

Come slowly- Eden

XLV

Two butterflies went out at noon

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading - treading - till it seemed

That Sense was breaking through -

 

And when they all were seated,

A Service, like a Drum -

Kept beating - beating - till I thought

My mind was going numb -

 

And then I heard them lift a Box

And creak across my Soul

With those same Boots of Lead, again,

Then Space - began to toll,

 

As all the Heavens were a Bell,

And Being, but an Ear,

And I, and Silence, some strange Race,

Wrecked, solitary, here -

 

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down -

And hit a World, at every plunge,

And Finished knowing - then -

•         

I Felt a Funeral in my Brain (1896)

•        The exact year of composition of the poem is not known.

•        It explores the working of the human mind under stress and attempts to replicate the stages of mental breakdown through the ovrall metaphor of a funeral.

•        The common rituals of a funeral are used by Dickenson to mark the stages of speaker’s mental collapse until she faces a destruction that no words can articulate

•        As the metaphorical funeral begins and progresses, the speaker’s mind grows numb until her final remark stops in mid- sentence. 

•        The poem is a staple in Dickenson’s canon and reflects her ability to replicate human consciousness in a controlled poetic form

•        The poem uses concrete language and imagery to explore abstract issues

•        An individual being assaulted by an idea that threatens to destroy all of his/her dearly held assumptions or a mind’s inability to cope with the pressures placed upon it from the outside world.

Theme

•        Aberration of the mind, the gradual breakup of rational powers and the final onset of madness.

•        Dickenson has concretized the experience of a sick mind obsessed with its approaching disintegration.

•        The use of funeral as a metaphor stands for the death of rationality.

Analysis

•        The speaker imagines that a funeral is taking place inside her brain and she can feel the mourners pacing to and forth

•        The mourners sit down and the funeral service begins. Unfortunately this service seems more like a performance of stomp than a religious gathering. The drum like beating of the service makes her think her mind is going dump

•        The mourners lift the casket and walk across her soul(they are wearing heavy lead boots which is unthoughtful of them)

•        At the end of the service, she feels as if a church bells were ringing inside her head. She imagines her mind as the entire universe.

Hymn like poem in quatrains

•        Dickenson’s poems are frequently compared to church hymns. Church hymns are often written in rhyming quatrains with regular rhythm.

•        Rhyme scheme : ABCB

•        Meter: Iambic

•        One of the most common meter in hymns is eight syllable line followed by six syllable line. 

Symbols

•        Funeral

•        Mind- Body-Soul

•        Sound

•        Weight

•        Versions of reality

•        Suffering

•        Religion