Poetry

I knew poetry could be moving; I really did.  I've never been an extreme fan of poetry. In fact, I rather disliked it back in high school.  However, I know that there can be real meaning behind the words of a poem.

I may have just learned this first-hand from longhand.  I decided I wanted to write -- copy, rather -- Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise" poem.  It is, without question, my favorite poem of all time.  It's much longer than most people realize.  I got out an unlined piece of printer paper, took my pad of lined paper and set it underneath, and began to write.

"You may write me down in history 

with your bitter, twisted lies.

You may trod me in the very dirt,

but just like dust, I'll rise."

The very first stanza, complete with 26 words, ties words together in a formula that produces extreme results.  Without reading the rest of the poem, you still understand what is going on.

"Does my sassiness upset you? 

Why are you beset with gloom,

just 'cause I walk as if I have oil wells

pumping in my living room?

Just like suns and like moons,

with the certainty of tides,

just like hope springing high, 

still I'll rise."

These next two stanzas compliment each other.

Skipping ahead a bit, we reach my favorite stanza in the entire poem.

"You can shoot me with your words.

You can cut me with your lies.

You can kill me with your hatefulness,

but just like life, I'll rise!"

This stanza, to me, has some of the most powerful language in the entire poem.  What it says, to me, is that no matter what you try to do to me, no matter how much you bring me down, no matter how cruel you can be, I'll still rise.  I'll still be me and I'll still be the person I've always been and the person I'll always be.

As I was writing, I was learning.  I could hear the words spoken in my own head.  I had heard the words pass over my lips, through my teeth and over my tongue before, but never had I felt them through my hands and out of my fingertips.  As I reached the following stanza (I'll underline the particular line), I began to tear up.

"Out of the huts of history's shame,

I rise.

Up from a past rooted in pain,

I rise.

A black ocean leaping and wide,

welling and swelling, I bear in the tide."

Never before have I cried while I wrote something.  It was not a sad cry -- no, not at all.  It was more of crying because I thought of how powerful -- really powerful those words were.  Those words, as they flowed out of my hand, hit me.  Not like a high school bully punch, but like a freight train barreling down the tracks. As Maya herself says, words are things. They can get into your wallpaper, underneath your rugs and deep in your skin.  Be careful the words you use, and make sure they're the words you mean to use.