The poem under analysis is Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou. In this poem the author is often describing her features such as “the reach of my arms” and “the span of my hips.” She goes on to tell how people react to her and what they think of her. She specifically mentions how men react to her. They do things such as “swarm around me” and “wonder what they see in me.” She then explains that “I’m a woman phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, that’s me.”
Each stanza in Phenomenal Woman has the same structure. Each stanza starts by describing the author’s situation or how people act towards her. In the middle of the stanza she lists a variety of her features like her arms, hips, step, and lips. The last four lines of every stanza say “I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That’s me.” The author uses fairly simple descriptions and uses minimal use of figurative language. One example of a metaphor is the author describing men crowding her by saying they are “A hive of honey bees.” Another example of a metaphor would be the author referring to her beauty as her “inner mystery” and “where my secret lies.” I think that she includes these metaphors because they explain the struggle that people have trying to understand what makes her beautiful. She is trying to explain that it will always be an "inner mystery" to other people because there isn't a certain thing that she does to make her beautiful.
In my opinion, the objective of this poem was to say that even though this author in beautiful and every man wants to meet her, it isn’t because of what she has done to herself, but because she has always strived to be only her herself. I believe that this poem can help women find that they are phenomenal just by being themselves. With this being said, the mood of the entire poem was an encouraging mood and it was trying to lift up others by making them look at the good in themselves.
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