MMPH! YES!! Yes yes yes!!!
This poem is ecstatic. The reading of it is power distilled into words, like a spell. Say them aloud; the images and feelings fly out of you like sparks. It’s real magic.
There are so many reasons to talk about Dr. Maya Angelou any time, any where. In the anxiety and fiery despair of a pandemic running loose under the sick joke of a Trump presidency, there are heavy reasons to do so. But that would be me trying to punch way above my weight. I just want to gush about how much I love this magical poem.
I’m writing about it now because when the Covid19 health advisories started coming down, I saw a tweet from a doctor saying to wash your hands for as long as it takes to sing “Happy Birthday” twice. Well, that got boring fast, given that we’re washing our hands to the point of scaliness. So I switched to reciting a Shakespeare sonnet I began memorizing a few weeks before. That was more interesting, as I watched my practice smooth out every bumpy hesitation. I can now rattle that thing off accurately even with divided attention. The world of poetry then opened up and I started dreaming of going off on epics.
“Still I Rise” had been calling me for a long while. I had watched the video above a few years ago, but I must have heard Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus” first because I remember being surprised by Dr. Angelou’s very light and airy delivery of words that pack so much power. She’s light as a dandelion seed riding the wind to the sun. She’s butterfly wings that can’t be ruined no matter how carelessly or cruelly handled; the sunlight bouncing off them as they flutter casually away can blind a man.
The poem is fiercely defiant without taking on anything heavy, like anger or sadness. That’s the ultimate middle finger in the oppressor’s face: Happiness and success are the best revenge. And Maya is simply telling you how it is. “Still I Rise” is not a reaction. I’ve seen so much pop-psychology telling us to stop reacting; that codependency is built on angry, wounded, jealous attempts at each other’s eyes. If that’s so, then authenticity must be its opposite. Angelou just felt like telling you how great it is to be her, and nothing you’ve done or tried to do has diminished or will ever diminish it. That’s her soul she’s talking about. You can’t touch it.
While this is a poem about blackness, it resonates personally for me today. As part of our Cinco de Mayo celebration, my mom and sister decided to spend the evening honoring our Hispanic roots by watching a film called Salt of the Earth, which was an incredible story about a real labor issue that affected my paternal grandparents near Silver City, NM. It was a strong film with a feminist heartbeat and I can’t believe a handful of white guys from the 1950s brought it to life. I felt the narrator, Esperanza, in my blood when she gave a courageous speech to her antagonistic husband: “I want to rise up and bring everyone with me!” My sister and I cheered at that line. The men in the film were determined to step on the necks of their wives in order to get a leg up in their own struggle, but Esperanza laid out definitively how progress must be made with everyone raising each other up.
There was also a part where the women took over the picket line, and that’s where the oppressors really cranked up the violence. They rammed a car into the picketing women, but once the injured had been attended to, the ladies not only got back to marching – they started singing.
I know it was propaganda but I align with the film’s values, so to me it was just a very heartening story. The struggles of our ancestors have always been for their descendants to have a better shot at a good life, which is an idea shared by both the film and Dr. Angelou’s poem. I’m pumped AF about being “the hope and the dream” of those who fought to “rise up from a past rooted in pain.” I can’t wait until I can conjure up this entire spell from memory. Every time I recite it I’ll be feeling my connection to my own ancestors with a sense of immense gratitude and joy.
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