Phenomenal Woman

In this poem, Maya Angelou is the narrator who is referring to herself. She explains that she may not be a model and act perfect, but accepts and loves who she is. In the third stanza of the poem she explains that husbands in women's lives love them. They love them because there's something about their wives that they can't find in anyone else. In the fourth stanza she's telling us that we don't need to be obnoxious, or loud to get attention. To get noticed she wants us to carry ourselves with passion and dignity. Maya angelou wants us to understand that being a phenomenal woman must first act like one.

One of the main poetic elements in this poem is imagery. In lines 7-9 she expresses imagery by stating "The span of my hips/The stride of my step/The curl of my lips." This type of imagery is visual because Angelou is trying to make reader imagine a woman. A woman who is proud of the way God created her, and showing how she can hold her head up high. The second example of imagery is in lines 39-42 where she states "It's in the arch of back/The sun of my smile/The ride of my breasts/The grace of my style." This type of imagery is visual because she's trying to make us imagine a woman with confidence, and nothing stopping her. The third example of imagery is in lines 54-55 where she states "It's in the click of my heels/The bend of my hair." This means that she's full of confidence from her head, down to her feet.

The second important poetic device in this poem is repetition because she repeats the phrase "I'm a woman/Phenomenally/Phenomenal woman/That's me." By using this repetition Angelou