Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2018 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1.5, National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad (Institute of English), course: English Literature, language: English, abstract: In this research paper, the researcher has tried to find out the image of black female depicted in Maya Angelou's poems. This research has been conducted by qualitative and analytical method because this research has not numerical data. After collecting data, the researcher has analyzed poems and supported by particular idea of feminist Sara Mills. The researcher has chosen only three poems of Angelou from "The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou which are ‘Still I Rise’, ‘Phenomenal Woman’ and ‘Caged Bird’". This study has been conducted by the use of black feminism theory and also focused on words, lines and stanzas. This research gives rise to enhance the argument in literature studies particularly Black Feminism self-esteem. Thus, it can enable others to organize research on African-American females. The analysis has explained that black woman’s different images are depicted in Maya Angelou's poems. In the first poem ‘Still I Rise’, Maya Angelou presents black female as a leader of the movement and challenges the society arrangement about black people. In the second poem, ‘Phenomenal Woman’, Maya Angelou describes a standard of beauty that beauty is not having beautiful face and slim smart body and thin lip. She says that a black woman can be phenomenal woman through her confidence and good personality and proud herself being black woman. In last poem ‘Caged Bird’, Maya Angelou shows underdevelopment of black woman due to tradition. As a coloured woman Maya Angelou raises her voice and says that soon, black people will be free. The present research concludes that author is presenting theme of hope in all above poems and she is a courageous black woman.

A Study Guide for Maya Angelou's "Woman Work," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.

Presents a collection of critical essays which discuss the major works of the African American poet.

The haunting legacy of Emily Dickinson's life and work has shaped a romantic conception of poetry as private, personal, and expressive that has governed the reception of subsequent American women poets. Of Women, Poetry, and Power demonstrates how the canonization of Dickinson has consolidated limiting assumptions about women's poetry in twentieth-century America and models an alternative reading practice that allows for deeper engagement with the political work of modern poetry. Analyzing the reception of poems by Josephine Miles, Gwendolyn Brooks, Audre Lorde, and Maya Angelou, Zofia Burr shows the persistence of these critical outlooks and dispels the belief that we have long since moved beyond such limiting gendered expectations. Turning away from an obsessive concern with a poet's biography, Burr's readings of contemporary women's poetry accentuate its engagement and provocation of readers through its forms of address. Burr shows how displacing the limits of dominant reception is possible by approaching poetry as communicative utterance, not just as self-expression.

Another remarkable collection of poetry from one of America's masters of the medium. The first part gathers together poems of love and nostalgic memory, while Part II portrays confrontations inherent in a racist society.

Maya Angelou’s unforgettable collection of poetry lends its name to the documentary film about her life, And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters. Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size But when I start to tell them, They think I’m telling lies. I say, It’s in the reach of my arms, The span of my hips, The stride of my step, The curl of my lips. I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That’s me. Thus begins “Phenomenal Woman,” just one of the beloved poems collected here in Maya Angelou’s third book of verse. These poems are powerful, distinctive, and fresh—and, as always, full of the lifting rhythms of love and remembering. And Still I Rise is written from the heart, a celebration of life as only Maya Angelou has discovered it. “It is true poetry she is writing,” M.F.K. Fisher has observed, “not just rhythm, the beat, rhymes. I find it very moving and at times beautiful. It has an innate purity about it, unquenchable dignity. . . . It is astounding, flabbergasting, to recognize it, in all the words I read every day and night . . . it gives me heart, to hear so clearly the caged bird singing and to understand her notes.”