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.

This stanza focuses on the tough life she has been living through as a kid, which is characterized by those strong dudes who are fighting always; implementing the fear in her Veins, but the outside world still doesn’t scare not even a bit. 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? 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…

Moreover, she uses personification in “mean old Mother Goose” and “big ghosts in a cloud,” adding a touch of humor and lightness to the otherwise ominous list of things that don’t frighten the speaker. 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. 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.

Someone who repeats to themselves before a stressful situation, such as a job interview, ‘you can do this, you can do this, you can do this’ must doubt themselves on some level, because they are having to tell themselves they can succeed, whereas there would be no need to do so if this fact was self-evident. At the same time, of course, fear can make us forget things which are self-evident, so perhaps the reminder is merely to overcome an irrational fear, or doubt, within the moment itself. Angelou herself was a major figure in the civil-rights movement and a clandestine understanding between the two distinct personalities seems to span a generational and personality-gap, which is highlighted through the blending together of both of their works. Life Doesn't Frighten Me" review activity printable - print all section questions at once (options for multiple keys)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. The fifth stanza is the longest of the poem with seven lines. It is followed by the sixth stanza which only has one line. When the speaker comes upon the things she mentioned in the first four stanzas she scares them off. She says “boo” and they “shoo”. They run when she makes fun of them and they fly away when she doesn’t cry. She stands up to everything custom-made to scare her. The following single line is a repetition of the refrain “Life doesn’t frighten me at all”. 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

Hear Angelou read the poem herself, which she says she wrote “for all children who whistle in the dark and who refuse to admit that they’re frightened out of their wits”:

In the first stanza of ‘Life Doesn’t Frighten Me,’the speaker begins by taking note of the few things that might if she wasn’t so sure of her place in the world, frighten her. These are the “shadows on the wall” and the “noises down the hall”. The perfect rhyme that these lines and the others in this poem have, make each of these statements feel like a nursery rhyme. Something that its meant for a child to hear, read, or remember and take strength from. Angelou makes use of several poetic techniques in ‘Life Doesn’t Frighten Me’. These include, but are not limited to, repetition, anaphora, alliteration, and enjambment. The first, repetition, is the use and reuse of a specific technique, word, tone or phrase within a poem. Angelou repeats the refrain, “frighten me at all” ten times in the poem. It often begins with “Life doesn’t” and other times starts with “They don’t” or “That doesn’t”. Anytime something is repeated so frequently a reader should take their time considering it and what it means to the poet. 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. Mayas’ “Big ghosts in a cloud”, her “loud, barking dogs” and the hair-pulling, teasing school-girls that she speaks of are represented by Jean-Michel’s crude ‘scribbles’: the message is clear and simple. It is a tough world out there but no one should shy away from it.