Analysis of "Women work"

Maya Angelou 1928 (St. Louis) – 2014 (Winston-Salem, North Carolina)



I've got the children to tend
The clothes to mend
The floor to mop
The food to shop
Then the chicken to fry
The baby to dry
I got company to feed
The garden to weed
I've got shirts to press
The tots to dress
The cane to be cut
I gotta clean up this hut
Then see about the sick
And the cotton to pick.

Shine on me, sunshine
Rain on me, rain
Fall softly, dewdrops
And cool my brow again.

Storm, blow me from here
With your fiercest wind
Let me float across the sky
'Til I can rest again.

Fall gently, snowflakes
Cover me with white
Cold icy kisses and
Let me rest tonight.

Sun, rain, curving sky
Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone
Star shine, moon glow
You're all that I can call my own.


Scheme AABBCCDDEEFFGG XXEH XXCH XIXI CJXJ
Poetic Form Tetractys  (33%)
Etheree  (20%)
Metre 1101011 0111 0111 0111 101011 01011 1110011 01011 11111 0111 01111 1101111 110101 001011 1111 1111 1101 011101 11111 11101 1110101 111101 1101 10111 110100 11101 11101 1010101 1111 11111111
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 687
Words 146
Sentences 5
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 14, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 30
Letters per line (avg) 18
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 105
Words per stanza (avg) 28

About this poem

BY Maya Angelou

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Submitted on February 07, 2022

Modified on May 02, 2023

44 sec read
431

Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou is an American author and poet. She has published seven autobiographies, five books of essays, and several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning more than fifty years. She has received dozens of awards and over thirty honorary doctoral degrees. Angelou is best known for her series of autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, tells of her life up to the age of seventeen, and brought her international recognition and acclaim. Angelou's list of occupations includes pimp, prostitute, night-club dancer and performer, castmember of the opera Porgy and Bess, coordinator for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, author, journalist in Egypt and Ghana during the days of decolonization, and actor, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programs. Since 1982, she has taught at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she holds the first lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies. She was active in the Civil Rights movement, and worked with both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Since the 1990s she has made around eighty appearances a year on the lecture circuit, something she continued into her eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at President Bill Clinton's inauguration, the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961. more…

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