‘Still I rise’ is about Maya Angelou’s history. When you read the poem, you feel she has had a bad past, even if you do not know anything about her. The main themes in the poem are about discrimination, and being ill-treated but still coming across as the stronger one. She repeats “I’ll rise” throughout the poem, showing she has high hopes for herself. Towards the end of the poem, she starts to say “I rise,” which shows she is happy with how she is now, and possibly happy with the way people treat her. The point in this poem is to show that Maya had personal problems, but wanted to show she had enough inner strength to write about them, and that she wanted someone to listen to what she had to say.
The way ‘I Shall Return’ is written helps with how you interpret the poem. McKay wrote the poem in present tense “To laugh and love and watch with wonder-eyes”, but explains his dreams in the future tense “I Shall Return to hear the fiddle and fife”. This makes it obvious that his dreams aren’t yet fulfilled, but he hopes they will eventually. The theme is clear all the way through the poem. He repeats “I shall return, I shall return again,” to show his desire to return to the place of his happy childhood memories. McKay idealised his childhood, he ignored any imperfections and suggests his childhood was perfect. When he went to America, he noticed how much people didn’t respect their life, but this just made him realise how much he had, and he just let it go. The repetition he uses in the poem emphasises his longing to make people appreciate what they have.
Another of the main comparisons is that both poems are very personal; they decipher the poets’ childhoods and longings in life. The poems uncover the poets’ history, present lives’, and what they desire in the future.
The poems both have pastoral and natural imagery amongst them, “The forest fires burn” from ‘I Shall Return,’ and “Just like moons and suns” from ‘Still I Rise.’ This is a comparison; however, they explain them in a completely different context, Maya describing them as ‘on her side’ as she compares them with herself, turning the words into metaphors and using personification. Whereas McKay uses the natural imagery as a relaxing thing as he uses calm words such as ‘loiter’ and ‘bathe’ which makes this a contrasting point. The way the poets have done this is a brilliant way to get the poem flowing with different moods, whilst still getting their purpose across.
Angelou talks in a relaxing style, but uses rhetorical questions. This makes her sound challenging and possibly even angry. McKay uses slight aggression and anger in ‘I shall return.’ He uses bold imagery to do this. He also talks about natural things like “forest fires burn” and “blades of the bending grasses” and uses personification to make them seem like bad things, like blades of knives, and the burning of flames. However, he does also express his ‘washed away’ feeling vaguely, “...the streams that bathe the…” shows he has a lot of respect for things that happen everyday and shows how much beauty they actually have.
The poets make points and raise ideas about confidence whilst they talk about their childhood “Did you want to see me broken?” (‘Still I Rise’) makes a point of something that hurt her in the past, but now she shows she has enough strength to ask those questions she always wanted to know. That is similar in both poems, but talk in completely different attitudes, whilst explaining similar things. In my opinion, both poems are equally as good. ‘Still I rise’ uses very strong metaphors to bring back how Maya feels about black female history. “I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide, welling and swelling…” is a brilliant phrase, using strong personification. A “black ocean” takes the biggest thing on the planet, and uses black to make it seem mysterious. “Welling and swelling” could be annotated in two different ways; that black history is becoming more recognised as a big thing, or, the “welling and swelling” of a woman’s stomach when she is pregnant, emphasising the fact women play a big part in the world, that they are the ones who bring children into the world, and happiness. ‘I shall return’ is short but to the point. Claude takes beautiful things and ‘twists’ them, to make them seem they have a strong personality of their own. This poem is very effective with the way Claude uses very bold imagery. He takes things that people come across every day, but don’t take them into consideration in the way they should.
