Rising

“Still I Rise” is a powerful call for one to rise above whatever adversity they face. Angelou employs varying poetic techniques to echo and magnify this message. Beginning with the poem’s structure, Angelou initially follows a rhythmic ABCB pattern through the first seven quatrains of the poem. In so doing, Angelou lends the poem a sense of order and a set of “rules” to which the poem initially seems to be bound. For example, the first quatrain of the poem reads, "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" (1-4). This rhyme pattern, in which the "B" rhyme is recycled at the end the quatrain, suggests regularity and closure. However, as we reach the last two stanzas, Angelou breaks free of the poem’s perceived boundary...