Like a Pheonix....

I'm jealous.   

I always know when I've found a good poem; a good poem haunts me long after I'm done reading.  Like an angry ghost, the poem Still I Rise by Maya Angelou haunts me.  It's not an unpleasant haunting, I will gladly entertain the ghost as long as it stays, but like an echo is reverberates in my memory.  It repeats itself: "Still I rise, still I rise, still I rise."  It repeats itself over and over again until I can't hardly forget it.  As if Angelou saw the future, she knew that even in my memory, still she would rise. 

I can't seem to forget the poem.  She tells of the world stacked against her, how her enemies (some I assume reside within herself) want to see her defeated, but then how no matter what, she will rise above it all.  Even the structure of the poem is set up to give the sensation of rising.  One stanza will talk of the opposition, then the next will jump to how she reacts; she overcomes the opposition with grace and defiance, with an almost mocking tone in her voice.  She wants one thing to be clear, you can't bring her down.  Still she'll rise. 

The poem moves forward, starting low and moving up, until it reaches the last stanza.  She starts boldly:

Out of the huts of history's shame

I rise

She reaffirms her determination:

Up from a past that's rooted in pain

I rise

She tells of the power behind her:

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

She lays out the goal:

Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear

I rise

She conjures the voices of the past, the ghosts of all those who came before, and in climax seals upon me the words that will haunt me and echo within my memory forever:

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.