Maya Angelou's Inaugural Poem On The Pulse Of The Morning

While reading the poem a second time over the audience notices a very controlled rhyme scheme. The poem consists of a rhyme scheme of A,B,A,B,C,D,C,D … until we reach the last two lines of the poem where Line 13 rhymes directly with Line 14. It is worth to note that the author doesn’t follow through to the end with

Maya Angelou was an inspiring activist, poet, and woman. Angelou was born in St. Louis, Missouri on April 4, 1928. Throughout her lifetime she explored her career options as an actress, dancer, singer, writer, and editor among many other careers. Angelou had a tough childhood. Her parents divorced when she was very young and she was sent to live with her grandmother in Arkansas along with her brother Bailey. As an African American, Angelou experienced discrimination and racial prejudices. Angelou gave birth to her son Guy, at the age of sixteen and married her first husband Tosh Angelos, at the age of twenty-four. Angelou and Tosh divorced years later however, she did get married a couple of more times. Angelou experienced many

She also presents a slight rhythm to the reading that allows for smooth reading. In keeping with her open form, there is no set scheme to the rhyme pattern. However, there is a single ending sound constantly repeated without a set pattern throughout the work. She also connects pairs of lines at random just for the sake of making connections to make that particular stanza flow. At the same time, she chose blatantly not to rhyme in certain parts to catch the reader’s attention.

The poem also uses end rhyme to add a certain rhythm to the poem as a whole. And the scheme he employs: aabbc, aabd, aabbad. End rhyme, in this poem, serves to effectively pull the reader through to the end of the poem. By pairing it with lines restricted to eight syllables. The narrator creates an almost nursery-rhyme like rhythm. In his third stanza however, his last line, cutting short of eight syllables, stands with an emphatic four syllables. Again, in the last stanza, he utilizes the same technique for the last line of the poem. The narrator’s awareness of rhyme and syllable structure provides the perfect bone structure for his poem’s rhythm.

Maya Angelou’s poetry occupies a very special position in her development as a writer (Chow 1). As a child, Angelou went through five years of complete silence after she was raped at the age of seven years old, by a man named, Mr. Freeman. As a result of telling about her traumatic experience, her uncle’s literally kicked the man that raped her to death. Beings she spoke of her traumatic experience and the result of the man dying, she then imagined that her voice had the potential to kill. Thanks to her teacher, Bertha Flowers, at school Angelou started writing poetry as a means of expression of her life events through her poetry (Chow 1). Poetry thus played an essential part in the recovery of her voice, which in

The poems On the Pulse of Morning and One Today have similar meanings to them. In On the Pulse of Morning, Maya talks about the many different cultures in America. Stanza 9 is where Maya starts to talk about our roots (Angelou). As in how the Native Americans were forced to do things they didn't want to do for the sake of foreigners. Soon these foreigners and natives became our ancestors and diversity was born. Even though natives did not want to do these things, they looked up and out beyond the horizon with hope. Maya also has a stanza about molding the public image of ourselves (Angelou). This too creates diversity because everyone has a different way of molding.

The poem's structure consists of four stanzas. The first, second, and third stanza follow an abcc rhyme scheme, and the last stanza follows an aabb rhyme scheme. A the reader progresses through each stanza, it is seen that the narrator's dissatisfaction of her confinement

Welcome and thankyou to this discussion on celebrating a poet whose powerful language engages and influences others. The poet whose contributions demonstrate these features is Maya Angelou whose influence is evident in the poetry she produced. Maya Angelou is an American poet and civil rights activist, born in 1928 whose poetry is famous for its inspiration and is considered ‘one of the great voices of contemporary literature.’ (Metacritic, 2015) Maya Angelou’s personal and cultural experiences communicate the power of the African- Americans during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s and 1970s era to overcome adversity and oppression that are clearly reflected in her inspirational poems ‘Caged Bird’ and ‘Still I Rise.’ An analysis of these poems reveals that

“A Rock, A River, [and] A Tree”(1) are three objects mentioned in Maya Angelou’s poem spoken at Bill Clinton’s inauguration ceremony, “On The Pulse Of Morning.” These objects remain through all of Earth’s history to represent our past and future. Sunlight is used to represent the unified future that is to come in this poem, and shadow is used to represent hatred, and ignorance. The title of the poem refers to this improved future, represented by a sunrise, which begins to portray the motif of light and shadow throughout the poem. When we are approached by this new beginning, we have the “space to place new steps of change”(98). She wants to eliminate all discrimination and ignorance in our future. Maya Angelou also wrote a memoir, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, which carries out the theme of progress and advancement. Throughout her life you can see her rise through all of the hardships she faces, such as racism and rape. Rape is not discussed in the

The poems "One Today" by Richard Blanco and "On the Pulse of Morning" by Maya Angelou, both share similarities of describing challenges in life. Maya Angelou begins with mental pictures of the Tree, River, and Rock. They represent symbols for peace, security, wisdom, humanity, and freedom that is available to every person regardless of race, background, and circumstance. In a world where there is violence, injustice, and hurtful actions, it is up to each person to make things better for everyone. For example, Angelou mentions "The bruising darkness/Have lain too long/Face down in ignorance./ Your mouths spilling words/

The message of “On the Pulse of the Morning” is all people of the world need to come together and realize that nature is an important part of our lives, and how we are similar. The poem mentions the many things that America is challenged by. Equality can still be received by people from all different backgrounds and places. Nature should be respected in a way a person is treated. It is like starting a new beginning and heading towards change.

Hillary R. Clinton once said that “There cannot be true democracy unless Women’s voices are heard” (conference in Vienna, Austria 1997). That very brilliant quote relates to a very strong woman by the name of Maya Angelou. Angelou is “America’s most visible black female autobiographer and speakers” (scholar Joanne M. Braxton). She is known for her speeches, poems, and books, but what stood out to me the most was her 1993 inauguration speech when Bill Clinton was sworn into the White House. Ironically, in her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” Maya Angelou uses clear rhetoric, prehistoric metaphoric images, and inspirational concepts to alert her audience to treat the world differently.

“On the pulse of morning” describes the challenges facing the American people through personification. The challenges that faced America in the late 20th and early 21st century were the struggles for wisdom, freedom, and a greater future. Angelou advised the audience to return to wisdom, “Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow and when you yet knew you still knew nothing.” (Angelou) Another challenge faced in the poem is the struggle for freedom. “They all hear the speaking of the tree”, freedom for everyone no matter what ethnic background. Finally the last challenge in the poem is the future. Stating the importance of learning from history to have a better future, where we will not relive our past.

In this poem “Life doesn't frighten me” it has 8 stanzas but there are different numbers of lines in each one for example, stanza 3 and stanza 6 have 8 lines. But in stanzas, 1,2 have lines of 6. Also Maya Angelou uses rhyme scheme in her 8 stanzas. The rhyme scheme changes throughout the poem, for example, in stanza 5 the rhyme scheme is AABBC for example, the rhymes are where, hair, girls, curls, and all.

Because the poem is long, it won’t be quoted extensively here, but it is attached at the end of the paper for ease of reference. Instead, the paper will analyze the poetic elements in the work, stanza by stanza. First, because the poem is being read on-line, it’s not possible to say for certain that each stanza is a particular number of lines long. Each of several versions looks different on the screen; that is, there is no pattern to the number of lines in each stanza. However, the stanzas are more like paragraphs in a letter than