Fear is the enemy of creativity, the hotbed of mediocrity, a critical obstacle to mastering life. Few embody the defiance of fear with greater dignity and grace than Maya Angelou, who has overcome remarkable hardship — childhood rape, poverty, addiction, bereavement — to become one of today’s most celebrated writers. Like a number of other celebrated “adult” poets and novelists who have also written for children — including Sylvia Plath, Mark Twain, Anne Sexton, William Faulkner, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Mary Shelley, Leo Tolstoy, Oscar Wilde, Aldous Huxley, Gertrude Stein, James Thurber, Carl Sandburg, Salman Rushdie, Ian Fleming, and Langston Hughes— so has Angelou: The 1993 gem Life Doesn’t Frighten Me ( public library), conceived and edited by Sara Jane Boyers, pairs Angelou’s simple, strong words with drawings by legendary artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose signature style of child-like fancy and colorful emotional intensity offers a perfect match for Angelou’s courageous verses.

The tenth stanza brings the speaker, who is confirmed in these lines to be young, into the classroom. This is a place where most children experience fear at some point but she does not. The boys might pull her hair or taunt her, but she doesn’t care. If they show her “frogs and snakes” she isn’t bothered either. 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…In the final stanza, the speaker adds a touch of magic to her fearlessness by mentioning a “magic charm” she keeps up their sleeve and her ability to walk the ocean floor without breathing. This use of magical elements adds a sense of fantasy and wonder to the poem and further reinforces the idea that the speaker is not afraid of anything. Conclusion To conclude, the use of imagery, repetition, personification, and magical elements in the poem helped the writer convey a message of fearlessness and confidence in facing life’s challenges. Poetic elements are used to enhance the intended impact of the seemingly simple texts. Maya Angelou has added a variety of powerful poetic diction to make her poem a worth read. She has used imagery, symbolism, metaphor, and various other literary elements to convey a message of fearlessness and confidence. His paintings, all his mixed-media art, reflected his harsh view of the world. The poem is very typical of Maya Angelou and reads especially well out loud. I don't think though it is a good pairing with the paintings, but that said, it's a wonderful art book, 5 stars. Basquiat grew up in prosperous home but ran away at 15 and commenced his life of sex n drugs n ... rap. He was a grafitti artist, defacing or enhancing New York with his spray paint under the name of SAMO. He became associated with several galleries and patrons, most famously Andy Warhol's Factory. He'd always lived up on drugs and alcohol, but limited means bought limited supplies. The bounty that was fame brought money enough for excess, and at 27 he died from a heroin overdose.

Life Doesn’t Frighten Me’by Maya Angelou is a fourteen- stanza poem that is separated into uneven sets of lines. The stanzas range in length from one single line up to seven lines. The majority are tercets, meaning they have three lines. Angelou made use of a simple rhyme scheme within the text. The tercets mainly rhyme AAAA or AAB While the majority of the other stanzas make use of an alternating rhyme scheme of AABB. And then there is the end of the poem. What is the ‘magic charm’ kept up the speaker’s ‘sleeve’? Is it nothing more than the message of the poem itself: that life cannot and will not frighten her, something that she repeats to herself so that it becomes true? And is she repeating it to herself so often because she is trying to convince herself, but, despite the poem’s reassurances, her fearlessness is not quite so secure as she is making out? Angelou also makes use of anaphora, or the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of multiple lines, usually in succession. This technique is often used to create emphasis. A list of phrases, items, or actions may be created through its implementation. For example, the lines in stanza five that begin with “I” or the lines in stanza thirteen that begin with “Not”.

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Angelou’s earnest and gentle (while still impossibly powerful) voice, comes from experience through a life-time of struggle and discrimination and overcoming these obstacles coupled with the often-stated egotism and thirst for fame that Basquiat was said to have displayed in his personality, do not seem like they could match-up well together, however, the two visions link up perfectly.

The reference to the ocean floor and not having to breathe is a masterstroke: note that she doesn’t say she can walk the ocean floor and still be able to breathe, but that she doesn’t have to breathe at all. This invites a seed of doubt into the poem: is it akin to holding one’s breath until a danger has passed, or is believed to have passed? Or should we take it at face value as an unequivocally positive image?This poem I believe is great for children because it showcases how when life gets roughed we as human beings tend to become cowards and hide away from our problems which isn't a great decision but a normal responses when we are clueless to solving our problems. With this poem it helps the reader to realize that yes life can we difficult in different periods of our life but at the end of the day we must face our problems head on and look for the silver-lining or the rainbow at the end of a storm. The poem begins with imagery of shadows on the wall and noises down the hall, setting a tone of eerie and unsettling surroundings. The poem’s imagery and repetition create a firm conviction in the speaker’s words. For instance, the use of vivid imagery helps her describe her actions in response to these supposed scares, such as “I go boo, make them shoo” and “I won’t cry, so they fly.” This imagery adds a playful and childlike tone to the poem, further emphasizing the speaker’s fearlessness. The last two lines of the eleventh stanza admit that she might sometimes be afraid, but it’s only in her dreams. There, she can’t control what she feels. Life Doesn't Frighten Me" review activity printable - print all section questions at once (options for multiple keys)