How is the poem Phenomenal Woman a

reflection of the poets personal life?

The poem Phenomenal Woman describes the spirit of womanhood. The poem
describes a woman who is proud of being a woman, who is confident, follows her
heart, has faith in herself and believes in her inner strength. Such a woman is
phenomenally phenomenal.
The use of the first pronoun I indicates that the poet is talking about herself.
The poet was subjected to various kind of oppression and discrimination based
on race and gender. The poet is an African-American. She has experienced racial
discrimination, rape and oppression in America. The American standard of
beauty is to have fair colour, sharp features and blue eyes. But the African
American women do not conform to these standards. On the other hand, Maya
Angelou believes that inner beauty is the real beauty of a woman. She feels
confident in her curvaceous body and huge physique. She finds joy in her
womanhood. The poem is a reflection of her life which was full of struggle. Maya
Angelou concludes the first stanza of Phenomenal Woman by saying that she is
a phenomenal woman. Here the word phenomenal can have dual meanings,
one that is she is huge and the second, she has a towering personality. Thus, she
is huge in both physique and personality.
The poet tells her readers to ignore the conventional view of being beautiful
which is only related to physical appearance. Instead the poet asks us to feel
proud of what God has endowed us with. Women should not succumb to the
artificial canons of beauty. Maya Angelou reminds us that our beauty lies much
beyond the outer appearance. The tone of the poem is that of a strong, confident
woman who does not bother what people think about her. She finds happiness in
her womanhood. In the first three stanzas, she describes what other people think
about and her reaction towards their viewpoint. She is not embarrassed about
her huge physique. She considers herself a supreme woman and celebrates
womanhood. Maya says that no matter how cool she enters a room, men fall for
her and falls on their knees, they swarm around her like bees. She claims that its
the passion in her eyes, the shine of her teeth when she smiles, the movement
of her waist and the lightness of her feet that win men over. She is phenomenally
a phenomenal woman. She considers herself as supreme and outstanding.
Thus, Maya Angelou is best known for addressing the world through the medium
of her own life. Her works are a reflection of the social issues that were prevalent
in the second half of the 20th century. Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou
celebrates femininity and highlights the traits necessary for a woman to become
phenomenal. She believes that it is not the outer beauty of a person but the
inner one which makes each woman phenomenal. She criticizes the biased
societal expression that expects women to starve themselves in order to be
considered pretty.

Maya Angelous Phenomenal Woman celebrates the spirit of

womanhood. Discuss.
The poem Phenomenal Woman describes the spirit of womanhood. The poem

describes a woman who is proud of being a woman, who is confident, follows her
heart, has faith in herself and believes in her inner strength. Such a woman is
phenomenally phenomenal.

The poet tells her readers to ignore the conventional view of being beautiful
which is only related to physical appearance. Instead the poet asks us to feel
proud of what God has endowed us with. Women should not succumb to the
artificial canons of beauty. Maya Angelou reminds us that our beauty lies much
beyond the outer appearance.
She lists down some qualities that make truly phenomenal and why other women
and men find her beauty mysterious.
Phenomenal Woman begins with a stark comment saying that she is neither
cute nor has a great figure to suit a models size. She tells that pretty women
often wonders where the secret of her success lies. Moreover when she reveals
her so-called secrets to them, they refuse to believe her. She describes her
secret saying that it comes from her confidence, the way she stretches her arms,
the way she walks, the rhythm of her hips and also the way she smiles. Her
entire body is an expression of womanliness. Maya Angelou concludes the first
stanza by saying that she is a phenomenal woman. Here the word
phenomenal can have dual meanings, one that is she is huge and the second,
she has a towering personality. Thus she is huge in both physique and
personality.
In the second stanza, Maya says that no matter how cool she enters a room, men
fall for her and falls on their knees, they swarm around her like bees. She claims
that its the passion in her eyes, the shine of her teeth when she smiles, the
movement of her waist and the lightness of her feet that win men over. She is
phenomenally a phenomenal woman. She considers herself as supreme and
outstanding.
In the third stanza, she says she remains a mystery to men. Men often wonder
why they fancy her. They try hard as much as they can to understand her
mystery but they cannot touch her soul. Actually, they fail to understand that her
mystery lies in her womanhood. She indicates to them that her mystery is not
obscure but clearly expressed in her body language from the curve to her back,
to her smile and rhythm of her bosom. In fact, her influence lies in her grace, in
her femininity. In the last stanza, she asks her readers that they must have
understood by then her power and influence on others and why her head is
never bowed that is she walks confidently with her head always held high. She
says that she need not have to jump or talk loudly to grab attention when she
walks by. She influences all by passing quietly yet full of expression in every
gesture she makes. She declares that her power lies in the sound of her heels,
the curve in her hair, the palm of her hand. Finally, she restates the fact the she
is a phenomenal woman.
Throughout the poem, we find the spirit of womanhood is highlighted. Maya
Angelous Phenomenal Woman asserts the theme that Beauty is more than
skin deep. She refutes the theory that beautiful women should have wellproportioned physique and vital statistics. She disapproves the distorted view of
beauty, which emphasizes more on outer beauty than inner beauty. She argues

that true beauty lies within and body language is the medium through which it is
expressed.

How does Dilip Chitre describe his fathers train journey in

Father Returning Home?
Father Returning Home is a short and appealing poem about an old man in a
cosmopolitan city where his own sons and daughters treat him as an alien. He
himself is estranged from the man-made world. Through this poem, Chitre has
denounced the urban rootlessness and alienation. The poem, Father Returning
Home focuses on the theme of alienation or estrangement experienced by the
aged in their twilight years. Dilip Chitre talks about his own father and through
the poem, we get to know the alienation, isolation and misery experienced by
elderly people, especially in cities.
The first stanza of Father Returning Home describes the train journey of his
father while returning home one evening. The father stands among commuters in
the yellow light of a local compartment. The poet describes his fathers reaction
against the sights of the suburbs that pass by. His father remains unmoved by
the sights because they are too familiar to him. That is quite normal, isnt it? We
hardly pay attention to those places where we travel every day, unless the place
has something interesting to offer. Same was with the poets father. The poet
then describes his fathers pathetic condition, as he travels during the rainy
season. His clothes become damp and dirty. The black raincoat that he wears
becomes stained with mud. His bag crumbles with the heavy load of the books.
Due to old age, the poets fathers eyesight has become poor and therefore he
finds difficulty to move about in the dark. The poet says that he can see his
father getting down the train like a word dropped from a long sentence. The
sentence is highly unique and it provides an evocative image of an old man who
gets down from the train as if he is no longer relevant to it. The poet then sees
his father hurrying through the long, grey platform. The man seems to be as old
as the platform, who has been using it as a part of his routine. He crosses the
railway tracks and hurries home through muddy lanes on a rainy day. This is
indicated by his chappals which are sticky with mud. This stanza portrays the
monotonousness of the old man, who sustains the vagaries of weather as well as
the estrangement from the man-made.
The second stanza, the poet represents the alienation of his father that he
experiences in his own dwelling. The poet tells us that his father drinks a weak
tea and eats a stale chapatti when he comes back home. This shows that the
even his basic requirements are not properly carried out by his family. A sense of
pity for the poets father arises in us, what do you think?

The father is then seen going into a contemplative mood after reading some kind
of a philosophical book. He goes to the toilet and contemplates over mans
alienation from the man-made world. This exhibits that the man is visibly upset
with his predicament. He is terribly shaken when he comes out of the toilet and
trembles while he washes his hands at the wash basin. It seems that he trembled
not only because of the cold water but also due to the thoughts that came into
his mind while he was thinking in the toilet.
The father finds himself all alone in his room as he is written off by his children.
The children do not interact with their father; they do not share their joys or
sorrows with him. To compensate their company, the father listens to the radio.
Then he goes to sleep. In his sleep, he dreams about his ancestors and
grandchildren. It seems that he is trying to communicate with his ancestors who
had entered the subcontinent through the Khyber Pass in the Himalayas in the
past. The dream mirrors that the old man is either thinking about his past (his
ancestors) or his future (his grandchildren). It is a kind of relief to him from his
mundane routine, devoid of any human contact.

Critically analyse Marge Piercy's "Breaking Out."

Piercy's "Breaking Out" holds meaning in terms of its technique and thematic
elements. Both aspects contribute to the poem's overall meaning of activism
and the need to forge a statement of defiance in a world where conformity is
expected and enforced. Piercy's poem is one of transformation, where individuals
can envision what they can be as opposed to what is expected of them.
From a structural point of view, there is no definite convention to which the poem
must adhere. Stanzas of four lines and three lines alternate. There is no defined
rhyme scheme. In its openness of form, Piercy seeks to give articulation to the
condition of freedom that the subject of the poem, herself as a child, experiences
at its end. Piercy delivers a poem from a narrative point of view, reflective of her
own growth from a child to an adult. The experience of the ruler and the
discipline she experienced at its hand becomes the critical aspect of the
narrative frame.
The surface meaning of the poem is a reflection about how Piercy as a child
experienced discipline in the form of beatings with a wooden yardstick. From
this, the sensory imagery utilized in the poem brings out the narrative frame of
reference from the child's point of view. The initial sight of the closet doors,
"leaning together like gossips," establishes the exposition for the entirety of the
poem. The description of the vacuum bag as "stuffed with sausage" is another
example of the sensory imagery in the poem, as is the detail of how she
responded when she was beaten with the meter stick as one who "bellowed like
a locomotive."
The imagery of the poem is one that combines a sense of oppression with
liberation. Both dynamics are critical to the appreciation of the poem. The
oppressive tendencies can be seen in the images of domesticity. This is evident
in the description of the speaker's mother's life with lines such as "to see my
mother removing daily/ the sludge the air lay down like a snail's track" or

"housewife scrubbing/ on raw knees as the factory rained ash." This inward
imagery of domesticity is contrasted with the extroverted pictures of liberation
that is evident in the lines, "red and Blue Mountain/ ranges on a map that offered
escape" and "I could travel to freedom when I grew." In utilizing images that
represent oppression and liberation, it becomes clear that Piercy is suggesting
that her childhood was positioned between the world of expectation and
conformity, representing the silencing of voice, and one of liberation and
transformation, involving a departure from it. The poetic devices in the poem
help to enhance the poem's thematic function.
The poem's themes reside in the struggle towards liberation. The titular concept
refers to a forcible repudiation of a contingency that silences voice. This
repression is seen on two levels in the poem. The first is the repression of
women in the form of imposed domesticity. The speaker of the poem reacts with
intense rejection towards a life where she is told what to do and how to live: "...
as if weary of housework as I, / who swore I would never dust or sweep." Her
reaction is an indication that the predicament women face is one where they are
forced into a life of domesticity with limited opportunities for freedom and voice.
It is an existence tethered to routine, denying freedom, and steeped in
monotonous repetition. The invocation of Sisyphus from the school lesson is
reflective of how the speaker perceives domestic life. The second level of
repression exists in the parent/ child dynamic. The child speaks of being beaten
by both parents with the "wooden yardstick." Her breaking of the rule enables
the speaker to move into "power gained." The ability to assert her voice in the
face of parental repression represents her voice authenticated and her narrative
validated. She has clearly established that she will not be Sisyphus in her act of
breaking the yardstick. It is this in which the "breaking out" element is most
demonstrative.
Piercy describes her writing as emerging from a singular vision. It is a vision that
she believes unifies her process and products of thought: "I dont really
differentiate between writing a love poem or a poem about a blue heron, or a
poem about a demonstration or a poem about a Jewish holiday. To me, its all one
vision. This vision is one where individual voice is revealed. This is evident in
"Breaking Out." Bill Moyers argues that Piercy's gift is evident when she "forges
imaginative communities centred in day-to-day mature relationships and on the
awareness that human capacity cannot be separated from specific individual
circumstances." The transformative moment in which Piercy breaks the ruler and
breaks out into a world of "power gained" becomes central to the poem.