This book is a collection of poems by Maya Angelou. I am reviewing the poem "Phenomenal Woman".

This is a poem that states how phenomenal women are. It describes how powerful women can appear to those around them. We can catch a man's attention by the way we walk into the room or the way we stand. It reminds us that we are phenomenal because we are strong, able to take care of so many other people, take care of our homes, our families yet able to have careers. Women are phenomenal because we can do it all and be so much to so many people. It makes me feel empowered and strong!

I would recommend this poem for young woman ages 17-25 because that is when we are at an age where we need to be reminded just how capable and in control we are.

Conveying through a different way I think is appropriate for something like this haha

n  The Tome of the Bard: A Poem for a Poetn

Fortuity was knocked by a quivering surge of
Low tides stretching aloft,
Infants on their feet,
Buds branching out
Of the realm I've restrained;
Woods serpentine to tumble down into leafbeds
The library's collection
Of the Bard's brave adventures.

A chapter is read
And the rest is history.

No less than the mighty
Warriors of the Vale
Is the Bard's vigor
That pounds out in syllables.
Languor defied like gravity's grip
That swallows her people
Into the void
With iron fists and blades of sound.
With graceful sways and eloquent speech,
She triumphs with her homilies
Delivered by the winds to faraway shores
Out of purity of heart
For the cleansing of ancient ghosts,
From the pulpit of poets.

Smearing the curse with a wave of a quill
With skill of labyrinthine traits
And horizon-wide truths
That mimics the beauty possessed by the human.
Her agony, shared from her people,
Cries of elixir poured down to the belly of the Bard
In a brew that expels injustice off its pedestal.
She beckons with a banner stitched in endless
Fabrics of emotion in a pattern of wise words
Acquired by her wanderlust, living a million lives,
For unity to reign like a famine rain.

Her tales of romance evokes a fervent passion;
Loss has never been conveyed in this way;
Stylistic choices in compelling fashion,
Legions of dreamers joining the fray.

Words seem to sparkle in animated breaths
That beat and mold by the Bard's creativity.
Words seem to build bridges between distant lands,
Covering chasms of our differences
With messages showing our likeness.
Words seem to guide lost Travelers in search
Of a place of one's own,
Of a hope to cling on
In tempestuous days lingering on
Shoulders withering like ephemeral plants.
Words build up to a lighthouse,
Refined concrete carrying the star
That shoots through the hearts of weary souls--
Slaves of monochrome's yoke.
Words seem to be
My reason to live
In futures ensnared
In love unperceived.

The reverie broken by the finale
Of the Bard's brave adventures
Strewn in mystical warmth.
The living life onwards was walked with every step
Pulling strength out of the gospel of her heart.
In truth, words fail
Without the Bard's tome
Of lyrical intelligence
Referenced for endeavors of self-expression.
I draw power from her discharges of
Artistic finesse
Honed by the sorrows of torment
And the ragged hands of humanity
That wish nothing but the dawning of hope.
How then can I ignore the springing trees
That dance in the flute of language and vocabulary?
How then can I avoid the beaming solar power
When it is unveiled in all of its glory?
This chance encounter kneeled me into reverence
To the sanctity of wordsmiths
Echoing in the astrals
To follow its trail.

No poetic resplendence goes overstated
In the Bard's compendium of words,
Marking an epoch in the sands of time,
A legacy told to us of one kind.

Lovely poetry.
I've just loved throughout all poems encrypted so greatly with deep emotions.
An incredible piece of poems.
What a catastrophic selection of words.

Some Good lines-
"I note the obvious differences
between each sort and type,
but we are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike"

"I note the obvious differences
in the human family.
Some of us are serious,
some thrive on comedy"

"Life is too busy, wearying me.
Questions and answers and heavy thought.
I've subtracted and added and multiplied,
and all my figuring has come to naught.
Today I'll give up living."

"My life ain't heaven
but it sure ain't hell.
I'm not on top
but I call it swell
if I'm able to work
and get paid right
and have the luck to be Black
on a Saturday night"

"If they want to learn how to live life right,
they ought to study me on Saturday night"

"You said to lean on Your arm
And I'm leaning
You said to trust in Your love
And I'm trusting
You said to call on Your name
And I'm calling
I'm stepping out on Your word.
You said You'd be my protection,
My only and glorious saviour,
My beautiful Rose of Sharon,
And I'm stepping out on Your word.
Your word.
Joy Joy
The wonderful word of the Son of God."

"When you see me walking, stumbling,
Don't study and get it wrong.
'Cause tired don't mean lazy
And every goodbye ain't gone.
I'm the same person I was back then,
A little less hair, a little less chin,
A lot less lungs and much less wind.
But ain't I lucky I can still breathe in."
"Black like the hour of the night
When your love turns and wriggles close to your side
Black as the earth which has given birth
To nations, and when all else is gone will abide"

"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"

"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"

"When the sun rises
I am the time.
When the children sing
I am the Rhyme."

"Then you rose into my life
Like a promised sunrise.
Brightening my days with the light in your eyes.
I've never been so strong,
Now I'm where I belong"

"Funky blues
Keen toed shoes
High water pants
Saddy night dance
Red soda water
and anybody's daughter"

"Thus she had lain
sugarcane sweet
deserts her hair
golden her feet
mountains her breasts
two Niles her tears.
Thus she has lain
Black through the years."
"Suits on Me
All the people out of work,
Hold for three, then twist and jerk.
Cross the line, they count you out.
That's what hopping's all about.
Both feet flat, the game is done.
They think I lost. I think I won"

"They'd nasty manners, held like banners,
while they looked down their nose-wise.
I'd see 'em in hell, before they'd sell
me one thing they're wearing, clothes-wise."

"What a pity
that pity has folded in upon itself
an old man's mouth
whose teeth are gone
and I have no pity."

"Where touch to touch is feel
And life a weary whore
I would be carried off, not gently
To a shore,
Where love is the scream of anguish
And no curtain drapes the door."

"I lost a doll once and cried for a week.
She could open her eyes, and do all but speak.
I believe she was took, by some doll-snatching sneak.
I tell you, I hate to lose something."

“We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon That, in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living Yet those same hands can touch with such healing. irresistible tenderness,
That the haughty neck is happy to bow And the proud back is glad to bend Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines”

Oof. There is some heavy material in here. Decades after these poems were written the topics and content are (unfortunately) too relevant and present. Some poignant lines that stood out to me:

n  
n

Even minimal people
can't survive on minimal wage.

and

So, I'll believe in Liberals' aid for us
When I see a white man load a Black man's gun.

Maya Angelou is a really amazing poet. This collection shows off her linguistic range and how her style has changed over the years. At times she can be vivid and descriptive, other times sparse yet potent. Her poems never cease to be evocative, exploring themes you can tell were close to her heart. From racial injustices and lost love to celebrations of joy and faith, there is something in here that everyone can relate to and learn from. Angelou is truly a master of the English language, and I highly recommend reading her work.

Dawn offers
innocence to a half-mad city.

The tacit fact is:
the awful fear of losing
is not enough to cause
a gleeing love
to stay.

On late evenings when
quiet inhabits my garden
when grass sleeps and
streets are only paths
for silent mist
I seem to remember
Smiling.

Maya Angelou’s The Complete Poetry is a volume to savor and cherish. The only reason I opt with four stars instead of five is that as much as I admire Angelou’s work, she ranks just below the pantheon of my favorite poets who include Carl Sandburg, Langston Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Wislawa Szymborska, Pablo Neruda, Mary Oliver, and Sharon Olds.

With that said, Angelou is a fine poet. She is an astute observer of society with an attentiveness to the injustices and unrest of history. She addresses the struggles of being a woman and celebrates its joys. She is, above all, a witness who confronts the hardships of life with fortitude and grace. Even through pain, anger, and frustration, her hope and faith remain strong.

Here is a snippet of a few of her verses that I highlighted:

She says in “My Guilt" that “My crime is I’m alive to tell.” And in the last line of the poem she admits, “My sin lies in not screaming loud.”

She observes in “On Working White Liberals” that “. . . I’ll believe in Liberals’ aid for us / When I see a white man load a Black man’s gun.”

She personifies the country in “America” and says, “Her proud declarations / are leaves on the wind[.]”

The opening lines in “Woman Me” resonate with hope: “Your smile, delicate / rumor of peace.”

She sees in “My Arkansas” how “The sullen earth / is much too / red for comfort.”

She remembers in “A Georgia Song” that “Oh, the blood-red clay, / Wet still with ancient / Wrongs . . .”

Maya Angelou's presence overpowers her writing for me. I've only seen a handful of film interviews and readings, but her voice, delivery, and sheer persona are electric. Thus, having the words stripped of this physical presence felt a bit like a letdown. You can't really hold that against a writer. This is a lot of poetry packed in to one volume and it felt like the quantity watered down the quality of more than a handful of true gems (which probably could be said of mostly any large "complete" collection of a poet). The rhythm and subject matter of her writing appealed most to me--there's a kind of tireless fight for the freedom of the spirit, equality, and the recognition of individual humanity and dignity. She was a writer who knew the kind of world she wanted to fashion with her words and believed those words could make a better world. And this volume lets you see that world through the eyes of a young, passionate woman on through to the wise, American elder she became.

A few favorites:

"London" (I couldn't find an online version to copy and paste or link to.)
----------------------------------
Maya Angelou performing "The Mask" (I don't believe this one is actually in the book.)
----------------------------------
Some Kind of love, Some Say
Is it true the ribs can tell
The kick of a beast from a
Lover’s fist? The bruised
Bones recorded well
The sudden shock, the
Hard impact. Then swollen lids,
Sorry eyes, spoke not
Of lost romance, but hurt.

Hate often is confused. Its
Limits are in zones beyond itself. And
Sadists will not learn that
Love, by nature, exacts a pain
Unequalled on the rack.

----------------------------------
Human Family
I note the obvious differences
in the human family.
Some of us are serious,
some thrive on comedy.

Some declare their lives are lived
as true profundity,
and others claim they really live
the real reality.

The variety of our skin tones
can confuse, bemuse, delight,
brown and pink and beige and purple,
tan and blue and white.

I've sailed upon the seven seas
and stopped in every land,
I've seen the wonders of the world
not yet one common man.

I know ten thousand women
called Jane and Mary Jane,
but I've not seen any two
who really were the same.

Mirror twins are different
although their features jibe,
and lovers think quite different thoughts
while lying side by side.

We love and lose in China,
we weep on England's moors,
and laugh and moan in Guinea,
and thrive on Spanish shores.

We seek success in Finland,
are born and die in Maine.
In minor ways we differ,
in major we're the same.

I note the obvious differences
between each sort and type,
but we are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.

We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.

We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.

I rarely read poetry because I have difficulty connecting with it. But this collection, on audio, is performed by the author herself, and hearing it in her own voice is profoundly moving. It gave me the opportunity to experience some of her less widely known work. Some of my favorites:
Sounds Like Pearls  
Poor Girl
On Reaching Forty

I was also delighted to hear her actually sing parts of several spirituals that were the inspiration for the poem she wrote for Clinton’s inauguration.

Audiobook version, on CD (ISBN 0375420177), that I purchased on a sale rack years ago. Looking it up online just now in hopes of getting some audio samples to link to, I was amazed at the prices, but it looks as though it’s commonly available at public libraries, per WorldCat.

For the Twelve Tasks of the Festive Season book challenge, Task the Fifth: The Kwanzaa (Read a book written by an African-American author or set in an African country)

Actual rating: 3.5 stars, rounded up.

“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.”

Poetry is this fascinating dichotomy of autobiographical and subjective. Every poem says something about its poet, and yet every poem is completely dependent on the life experiences and imagination of its reader for whatever meaning they wring from it. Taking that into consideration, some of these poems resonated with me. Deeply. And some left me completely unmoved, or vaguely confused. But those that spoke to me are what I’ll remember about this collection.

“History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.”

Angelou’s style is all over the board. Evidently I’m a traditionalist when it comes to poetic forms. I like free-verse well enough, but ironically only if it has some structure. I was incapable of connecting with the less structured of Angelou’s poems, but thankfully this didn’t hold true for her entire catalogue, as her style was so fluid and ever-changing.

“We are born in pain, then relief comes.
We are lost in the dark, then day breaks.
We are confused, confounded, and fearful,
Then faith takes our hand.
We stumble and fumble and fall,
Then, we rise.”

I kept reminding myself that this wasn’t a traditional collection, where the poet had carefully compiled each poem to embody a certain theme, or period in their life, or some other binding quality. This book collected every poem Angelou ever wrote. No one produces profound, flawless art every time their pen meets the page. But within these pages were some intensely powerful poems, lines that ruffle feathers or shake cores or move hearts in ways that are difficult to describe. I can absolutely see why Angelou made such a mark on society, both through her life and her poetry. I might not have loved every poem in her body of work, but I’m very glad to have read them.

Such an important read and more in the times we live in. I love that through poetry we not only get to know the author but the woman. I am encouraged to read more black stories and poetry. A MUST READ!