Poetry Explication

This is my poetry explication from “Alone” by Maya Angelou.

Still I Rise

Today in class, we read another poem by Maya Angelou, which was called, “Still I Rise”. It was about a woman who dealt with a lot of problems but she still rise. This poem taught me that happiness is a decision, I believe that this is true because there are people who take problems a different way. Some people either hide their emotions and keep a smile on their face or they just be mad at the world. It’s very important to love yourself and others because it will give you the happiness that you want. When I was younger people would always talk about how I was ugly and big for my age and at some point I believed the words that were coming out of their mouths, I never had confidence in myself and would always talk myself down because that’s what other people did to me. But as I got older I realized that people are going to have their opinions about you and that’s what made me stronger and made me more confident in myself. This poem has made me a better person for myself and it has made me love myself even more.

Life Doesn’t Frighten Me

Today in class, we read another Maya Angelou poem, which was called, “Life Doesn’t Frighten Me”. But before we read the poem the class answered some questions about their fear. While reading and analyzing the poem, it taught me a lot of things. One of the important things that the poem taught me was to never fear anything and that we should get rid of our fear because in the Bible, God says that we shouldn’t fear anything but our parents but what God meant about fear was respect our parents. Another important thing I learned from this poem was that to always have strength with what you are scared of and that IT’S NOT THERE. People she get rid of there fear because it can better themselves and their future as well.

Maya Angelou

Today in class, we read two poems from Maya Angelou, which were, “The Mothering Blackness” and “The Black Family Pledge”. So far Maya Angelou Poems have been my favorite and not only because she is an black writer, her poems teach me that black people should stick together and stop going against each other. With “The Black Family Pledge” she talk about different things that are happening in today’s society for as younger people not respecting their elderly and not appreciating what their ancestors have fought for us people today. They have fought for a lot of things and died for a lot of things so that we can have the freedom that they couldn’t have.

How Being Black Is Important To Me

Being black to me is important because we have different varieties that others don’t have for example, natural hair. Natural hair symbolizes black power, it showed other race that we are very comfortable with our skin and also with our natural hair. With having natural hair, it takes time for black women to do there hair because of all the things they have to do to get it how they want it to look and also they have to put in a lot of products as well. I don’t have natural hair but my sister does and I know how it is for other black women because she have to use a lot of products to do the look that she wants to do. There are other cultures who don’t have natural hair who judge us black people for us having it because they think it’s too big or that it’s too nappy but I believe that our natural hair is what makes us who we are. Another thing that is important to me is slavery. I know that I never experience slavery but i do know that black women and men been through a lot during slavery. No other race can feel how we feel because black people had to lose there family to work for someone who either raped or torture them because they thought it was okay but it really wasn’t. Some different race always tell us black kids that we should stop telling them that they shouldn’t say anything about slavery because we didn’t experience it, but we are as hurt as the people who experienced it because we had great great grandmas and grandpas who experienced it, which is why we always get emotional about what other people say about slavery. As for racism, other race treat us as if we’re trash which is not okay because we are as human as they are. They always come for black peoples because they think that we always doing something negative and that we’re wild animals, they’re always saying slick races slurs, we are just humans who are having the time of there lives. I love being black and I will never change that for nothing in the world.

Cruising with the Beach Boys

Today in class, we read a poem called “Cruising with The Beach Boys” by Dana Gioia. What I learned from this poem was that bringing an past or present memory or memorizes can change your future. I believe this because there are good memorizes and bad memorizes, there are certain things that brings up that memory can change an aspect for your future. It can have an emotional feeling towards the person because the memory can be about an past relationship, sad situation, and even a past loved one.

Cluster

Today in class, we had a sub again so we were assigned to finish our cluster from last week with our group, than we had to write 2 paragraphs about the prompt that was assigned to our group. It was a kind of a hard to start on the essay because we couldn’t really come up with how we were going to start our paragraph. My group eventually figured out what we were going to do. It took us a long time to do the paragraphs, but we managed to still do it.