Women In Poetry (Maya Angelou)

Why women wrote poems? In my opinion, it is just like a diary. When sometimes you can’t speak to express your feeling, you find out it is the best way to write it in your diary. Whether you write or speak, there is only one aim, to express your feeling.

Maya Angelou Marguerite Ann Johnson was born on April 4, 1928) is an American author and poet. She has published seven autobiographies, five books of essays, and several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning more than fifty years. She has received dozens of awards and over thirty honorary doctoral degrees. Angelou is best known for her series of autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. Since 1982, she has taught at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she holds the first lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies. She was active in the Civil Rights movement, and worked with both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Since the 1990s she has made around eighty appearances a year on the lecture circuit, something she continued into her eighties. One of his poem I like most entitled “Alone”. It was written based on her own experience.

Alone by Maya Angelou

Lying, thinking

Last night

How to find my soul a home

Where water is not thirsty

And bread loaf is not stone

I came up with one thing

And I don't believe I'm wrong

That nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires

With money they can't use

Their wives run round like banshees

Their children sing the blues

They've got expensive doctors

To cure their hearts of stone.

But nobody

No, nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely

I'll tell you what I know

Storm clouds are gathering

The wind is gonna blow

The race of man is suffering

And I can hear the moan,

'Cause nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

The poem entitled Alone, by Maya Angelou, is a personal reflection of what the writer has endured during her lifetime. The poem Alone reinforces the fact that all humans need interaction and cannot live all alone. This poem also tries to warn the readers that man is suffering and the time to heal mankind is running out. Maya Angelou went through a lot of trials and tribulations in her life which to me seemed like she was alone. Maya Angelou's poem alone is talking about not being able to make it alone. She speaks about the well to do and how the money will not help when you're alone. People need others. As for me, I would say that the theme for this poem is Interdependence. It is the same theme as "No man is an Island". Everybody needs somebody to love, live, help. Wealth does not the most important thing.  Love and relationship is the most precious thing in our life. We do need other people. Nobody can make out here alone no matter how successful they are. When we talk about its rhyme, "Alone, has no rhyme pattern or scheme, which makes it a form of free verse poetry. I also found metaphor in this poem such as “Where water is not thirsty, and bread loaf is not stone”. Metaphor is an implied comparison that made between two unlike things that actually have something important in common.