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Maya Angelou Accomplishments

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The Life and Accomplishments of Maya Angelou

“Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud” (brainyquote). This quote by Angelou basically summarizes a good majority of the themes of Angelou’s poems. Angelou was, in fact, an inspiration or “a rainbow” (brainyquote) to many. Angelou wrote to express herself; she believed if she was going to write about something, it was important (Noah Charney The Daily Beast). Angelou’s childhood experiences played an important role in her poems and books. She inspired many with her words of wisdom and encouraged many to keep going even when life gets tough. Maya Angelou’s story begins on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis Missouri (bio.com). At the age of 7, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend and , because of …show more content…

Angelou mainly wrote her poems based on her feedback dealing with abuse, criticism, loss, hope, etc. (poetry foundation). Angelou’s poem “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” is a prime example . Some of Angelou’s main influences include Edgar Allen Poe, Thomas Wolfe, Anne Spencer, and John O. Killens (Danielle Dorky). During the five years Angelou remained silent, as said earlier in this research paper, she memorized Poe’s poems, however Anne Spencer helped her to start talking again “by showing her the beauty of the spoken word” (Danielle Dorky). Businessindider.com explains how Angelou told George Plimpton a glass of wine played a key role in her writing (Julie Zeveloff Business Insider), to put it another way, she had a very unique method to writing her poems. These are only some of Angelou’s influences and methods of writing but there are many more things that had an affect and played a role in writing her …show more content…

Angelou is stating that no one can take on all of the world’s weight without the help of others. Shmoop.com says: “When we get right down to it, this poem centers itself on an emotional landscape: the homelessness of the human soul. The roving, searching heart has no home- which is perhaps why we move from setting to setting in this poem as well (Shmoop Editorial Team).” There are a few possible themes to this poem, shmoop.com has four: isolation, suffering, spirituality, and society/class. The main theme of the poem, however, is needing someone to rely on when you can’t handle things on your own, as in lines twelve and thirteen, “Nobody, but nobody Can make it out here alone.” These lines are also repeated in a couple of other stanzas. The tone at the beginning of this poem is searching as said in line three, “How to find my soul a home”, while the tone at the end of the poem is realization. The overall tone of this poem is “epiphanic, as if the narrator had just figured something out revolutionary (to her this was)” (pt10thpoetry.weebly.com). This poem describes Angelou’s life because of how much she had put up with on her own and coming to the realization that she needed someone to lean on when the weight of the world became too much to

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