Compare and Contrast Poems ‘Still I Rise’ and ‘I Shall Return’ Essay

The verse forms I am comparing and contrast are Still I a rear and I Shall Return. The main similarity among these poems is to do with the theme. They both(prenominal) talk to the highest degree confidence and mental strength. The poets both have had actually different upbringings, scarce have both been cast down at one point in their lives.The cleaning woman who wrote Still I Rise, Maya Angelou, was born in Saint Louis. Maya was sent to live with her granny knot after she was raped by her mothers boyfriend. Soon after, she travel to San Francisco, to try to for get under ones skin roughly her troubled childhood. She wrote the bestseller I Know why the Cage Bird Sings as she travelled, and grass now speak fluently in lots of languages. Still I Rise is based on Mayas childhood being conducted unfairly, but still glide slope back with confidence.The other poet was a man, Claude McKay, who was born in Jamaica. He go to America and founded African blood brothers. Shortl y after, he moved to capital of the United Kingdom where he died of a come acrosst attack. His poem, I Shall Return shows he treasured other people to be grateful for what they had, and to show he had happier measure in his childhood. Also, its the start of your life the only time you can control your future, which is a very important matter in this poem as I feel he wishes that he could have stayed in the clever place of his childhood, and that it could have changed his whole life. The way he dialog about his recent pain To ease my mind of long, long eld of pain and the way he uses repetition emphasises the fact he couldnt get away from the pain.Still I rise is about Maya Angelous history. When you read the poem, you feel she has had a bad past, even if you do not know anything about her. The main themes in the poem are about discrimination, and being ill-treated but still coming across as the stronger one. She repeats Ill rise throughout the poem, showing she has high h opes for herself. Towards the end of the poem, she starts to show I rise, which shows she is happy with how she is now, and possibly happy with the way people treat her. The point in this poem is to show that Maya had personal problems, but wanted to show she had sufficiency inner strength to write about them, and that she wanted someone to listen to what she had to say.The way I Shall Return is written helps with how you find out the poem. McKay wrote the poem in present tense To laugh and love and tolerate with wonder-eyes, but explains his dreams in the future tense I Shall Return to hear the fiddle and fife. This wangles it obvious that his dreams arent yet fulfilled, but he hopes they provide eventually. The theme is clear all the way through the poem. He repeats I shall return, I shall return again, to show his desire to return to the place of his happy childhood memories. McKay idealised his childhood, he ignored any imperfections and suggests his childhood was perfect. When he went to America, he noticed how much people didnt respect their life, but this further made him realise how much he had, and he just let it go. The repetition he uses in the poem emphasises his longing to make people appreciate what they have.Another of the main comparabilitys is that both poems are very personal they decipher the poets childhoods and longings in life. The poems uncover the poets history, present lives, and what they desire in the future.The poems both have pastoral and natural tomography amongst them, The forest fires catch fire from I Shall Return, and Just like moons and suns from Still I Rise. This is a comparison however, they explain them in a completely different context, Maya describing them as on her side as she compares them with herself, turning the words into metaphors and using personification. Whereas McKay uses the natural imagery as a relaxing thing as he uses silence words such as loiter and bathe which makes this a contrasting point. T he way the poets have done this is a brilliant way to get the poem flowing with different moods, whilst still getting their purpose across.Angelou talks in a relaxing style, but uses rhetorical questions. This makes her sound ambitious and possibly even angry. McKay uses slight aggression and anger in I shall return. He uses bold imagery to do this. He also talks about natural things like forest fires burn and blades of the bending grasses and uses personification to make them seem like bad things, like blades of knives, and the burning of flames. However, he does also express his washed away feeling vaguely, the streams that bathe the shows he has a lot of respect for things that happen everyday and shows how much watcher they actually have.The poets make points and raise ideas about confidence whilst they talk about their childhood Did you want to see me broken? (Still I Rise) makes a point of something that hurt her in the past, but now she shows she has enough strength to ask those questions she always wanted to know. That is similar in both poems, but talk in completely different attitudes, whilst explaining similar things. In my opinion, both poems are equally as good. Still I rise uses very strong metaphors to bring back how Maya feels about black effeminate history. Im a black ocean, leaping and wide, welling and swelling is a brilliant phrase, using strong personification.A black ocean takes the biggest thing on the planet, and uses black to make it seem mysterious. Welling and swelling could be annotated in two different ways that black history is becoming more(prenominal) recognised as a big thing, or, the welling and swelling of a womans stomach when she is pregnant, emphasising the fact women play a big unwrap in the world, that they are the ones who bring children into the world, and happiness. I shall return is short but to the point. Claude takes beautiful things and twists them, to make them seem they have a strong temper of their own. T his poem is very effective with the way Claude uses very bold imagery. He takes things that people come across every day, but dont take them into consideration in the way they should.