Prompt #12: Pick
your favorite poem and record yourself reciting it.
I have never really been into poetry, although I love language and words. But this poem, Stil I Rise by Maya Angelou is so powerful that from the time I first read it it stuck with me. I really identify with the intention and feeling of her words. The way she refuses to accept limitation, oppression or discrimation is so uplifting. Her manner of 'sticking it to the man' and saying I will not accept being treated as anything less then the beautiful, sexy, unique individual that I am is what really speaks to me as the reader. I may not be from a culture or religion or racial group that has experienced and suffered from slavery or discrimation in the way that Maya was writing about, but I share her fighting spirit. I know what it is like to experience limitations and set-backs and to face the ignorance of strangers, but like Maya I have never accepted that such situations will alway exist. That is why I speak and write and live in a way that will hopefully help to change how things can be for others in similar life situations in the future.
Here are the words from Still I Rise;
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 back yard.
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.
I have never really been into poetry, although I love language and words. But this poem, Stil I Rise by Maya Angelou is so powerful that from the time I first read it it stuck with me. I really identify with the intention and feeling of her words. The way she refuses to accept limitation, oppression or discrimation is so uplifting. Her manner of 'sticking it to the man' and saying I will not accept being treated as anything less then the beautiful, sexy, unique individual that I am is what really speaks to me as the reader. I may not be from a culture or religion or racial group that has experienced and suffered from slavery or discrimation in the way that Maya was writing about, but I share her fighting spirit. I know what it is like to experience limitations and set-backs and to face the ignorance of strangers, but like Maya I have never accepted that such situations will alway exist. That is why I speak and write and live in a way that will hopefully help to change how things can be for others in similar life situations in the future.
Here are the words from Still I Rise;
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 back yard.
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.
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