Book Review =]

So, I only had a couple of poetry books at home and most of them are collections of poems by many authors or they are written mostly by teens. The only book of poem I have available is Maya Angelou’s selection called Poems. This book is more than 120 pages, but is divided into sections or parts. Because the book is separated by four books….Just give me a cool drink of water ‘fore I diie, Shaker, why don’t you sing, Oh pray my wings are gonna fit me well and And Still I rise, I decided to just read one of these parts. And still I rise is book in itself with three different parts…”Travling,” “Touch me, life, not softly” and “And still I rise”. The travel’s part is about women and relationships…or at least this is how it seems like to me. Phenomenal Woman is a famous poem by Maya and shows the beauty of the female body and sexuality. In this poem, there’s a reframe that shows up at the end of the stanzas. There is a kind of rhyme within the poem, but its lose and changes. At some parts every other line rhymes, but there are those parts that break completely free of this. The section called Traveling, seemed to be about different places, but I don’t know if it was through the poem or just through the titles of the poems. You go from my Arkansas to the woman work. It’s as if you travel through different lives and lifestyles, not just to different places. I thought this part would be predictable in the fact that it only moved through different towns/ places, but I was wrong. I think my favorite part of the section was the one entitled, And still I rise. When I was in highscool, I remember reading the poem with the same name and loving it for its repetitiveness and strength. I found this section more appealing because the poems were really powerful and meant so much then I was looking to find within them. My favorite poem in this section was On aging. I loved the meaning behind the poem and felt there was this universal experience of growing older and the things that go along with it. The rhyme pattern is again distorted but it really flows well the way it is. I think the overall themes are about life in general, but with a really strong tone or voice. I don’t know if younger people could really get into this poetry, but I definitely think an older age group would. I think I would like to emulate her voice, because it is very strong, but I don’t know if it is possible because she was such an amazing poet.