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imagery for this when she writes, “You may trod me in the very dirt, But still, like dust, I’ll rise”. Angelou also does a terrific job of pacing the poem. When one reads it, one can hear Angelou jumping out of the page at you with these words. It is almost like a sermon. One can hear the anger and also the confidence in her words. Finally, at the end Angelou declares:”I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise. I rise. I rise.”One can actually feel themselves rising with these words. Phenomenal WomanOnce again Angelou is writing of an inner confidence. But, this time it refers more specifically to women. She describes what it is to be a “Phenomenal Woman”. It is something rather hard to comprehend as “Men themselves have wondered what they see in me.” What it is, is simply an “inner mystery” that women possess. “It’s in the arch of my back,The sun of my smile,The ride of my breasts,The grace of my style.”Once again Angelou uses the perfect word choice and beat to make her words come alive. Picture of a ManThis poem is very unclear, so one can get imaginative in its meaning. I believe this poem is full of imagery. The poem is about a baby living alone with his mother. This is the reason why he “draws a man”. The tree then represents the stability that a father usually represents in a family. Then he asks “why in his story book the big boats have little boats”? This seems to be asking why do parents have children. Now, this is obviously an abnormal question for a child to ask. I believe he asks this because his mother physically abuses him. We begin seeing that something is wrong when he is so scared of the lights being turned off. Then we get an incite from the mother when she states “maybe I could have loved better but I couldn’t have loved more.” In other words, this could very possibly mean that she mistreated her son, though from purely good intentions. However, at the end she realizes that “This child is all I have left.”Ballad of BirminghamThis poem does a superb job of showing some modern day racism. Randall writes the first half of the poem in the form of a dialogue. This immediately gets the reader more involved in the story and more attached to the characters. Then Randall shows the reader how ugly the racism is by describing the innocence of the church. The Church is contrasted to the Freedom March through diction. Whereas the march will have “clubs and horses, guns and jail” at the church one may “sing in the children’s choir.” Now, one can truly understand that the racists have attacked the completely innocent instead of those who are rallying (not that that would have been right either, but this is worse). Then at the end, the reader is drawn right back into the poem with the mother’s plea, “O, here’s the shoe my baby wore, But, baby where are you?”The Test of Atlanta 1979I personally found this poem to be the most powerful in the anthology. This poem also describes modern day racism, but in a totally different manner as “Ballad of Birmingham” did. Whereas “The Ballad of Birmingham” was more of a story of two people involved in the incident, this poem actively questions the morals of every person. At first the questions don’t really personally affect us, “What kind of a person would kill a black child?” But by the end the questions become more personal:”What kind of a person are you?What kind of a person am I?What makes you so sure?What kind of a person could save a Black child?What kind of a people will lay down itslife for the lives of our children?What kind of a people are we?”The American JournalIn this poem, Hayden uses the first person of an alien studying Earth in order to give the reader an outsiders view of America. He describes the Americans, as people who really don’t understand their own identity, yet have a tremendous pride. Once again America is attacked for its superficiality and lack of spirituality, as we had seen before when comparing America to Africa. The Americans brag of freedom, yet the ghettos persist. What is so special about America is its diversity. In the end he concludes that although the Americans are a violent people, the alien is attracted to their diversity, ingenuity and something he can’t describe, the essence of America.