Poem Mechanics Summary

First published in 1978, the poem details the hopes of the speaker to abolish prejudices and injustice. It speaks to the struggle of the African American community. Major themes throughout the poem include courage, pride, and injustice. The speaker is proud of her identity and openly challenges those who want to hold her down. Rather than giving in to societal standards, Angelou illustrates a resilient and defiant spirit. Embodying the African American experience and feminism, she speaks to the harmful past of ancestors with the chains of slavery.

Speaking from the perspective of her own and similar to that of many other African Americans, the autobiographical poem can be assumed that the setting is America in the 1960s following the era of segregation and discrimination as based on Angelou's life. It can also be classified as political poetry, feminist poetry, and revolutionary African American poetry. The poem is broken into nine total stanzas. The first seven are quatrains, the eighth stanza is made of six lines, and the final stanza is composed of eight lines. The rhyme scheme follows ABCB for the first seven stanzas, which tightly links the stanza. The eighth stanza follows a ABABCC rhyme scheme and the final stanza follows a ABABCCBBB rhyme. The underlying conflict intertwined throughout the poem lies between the speaker herself and the people of society who have oppressed her and her community in the past, as well as are offended by her success and achievements. The speaker foreshadows her rise to equality and continued efforts of the civil rights and feminist movements.

Assonance is used in this line as the letter "e" sound and the rhyme of the two words produces a strong image of the speaker rising like an ocean's tide - emphasizing that she will bring change and drive the civil rights movement.

A refrain is a set of lines that is repeated at some distance throughout the poem. So in this poem, "Still I rise" is a refrain that is repeated in the first, third, and fifth stanza. "I rise" is also considered a refrain. The poem grows in power and builds to the climax in the eighth stanza. Preceding this stanza, the speaker intentionally questions the the oppressor and details the suffering of African Americans. After she is finished with her interrogation, she declares her objective to rise above this pain of the past by using the refrain.