POETRY ESSAY

Woman Work

Maya Angelou

I've got the children to tend

The clothes to mend

The floor to mop

The food to shop

Then the chicken to fry

The baby to dry

I got company to feed

The garden to weed

I've got shirts to press

The tots to dress

The can to be cut

I gotta clean up this hut

Then see about the sick

And the cotton to pick.

Shine on me, sunshine

Rain on me, rain

Fall softly, dewdrops

And cool my brow again.

Storm, blow me from here

With your fiercest wind

Let me float across the sky

'Til I can rest again.

Fall gently, snowflakes

Cover me with white

Cold icy kisses and

Let me rest tonight.

Sun, rain, curving sky

Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone

Star shine, moon glow

You're all that I can call my own.

Read the poem carefully and then write an essay in which you analyze how the poem reveals the speaker’s complex conception of a “woman's world.”

Woman Work by Maya Angelou fits in perfectly with the 21st century because our society has been taken over by Feminist stands. People today tend to believe women as either completely worthless or completely needed. They don't understand that being a women is mixture of need and want. Women are needed to fill the earth, keep men sane, raise kids right, even bring home the bread. There's more to a woman's life than being a trophy wife. If that's what a woman wants, that's completely fine but people don't realize that that's not the only thing we can do with our lives. 
Maya's use of imagery fulfills this poems theme to the best of it's ability. Woman tend to be described with strange emotions. pretty objects, lovely pictures. What's prettier than nature? To describe a woman using weather conditions, nature sceneries, is to describe with the most lovely intent. To make her beauty outshine any negativity to be associated with a woman. She used metaphors beautifully.
Her excessive use of cliches and stereotyping just added to the many themes associated. It could almost be looked at as satire. To describe the most basic chores that are continuously used against women, as work that women are supposed to do, makes a newer audience almost laugh with irony. Of course women can do those jobs but men can too. Women do it because no one else would like to step up and do things that obviously need to be done but most likely wouldn't not be done had it been left up to someone else. We do them to make sure things run smoothly, make sure your family or friends are content.