![]() Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie has received mixed reviews from critics but was a best-seller. The metaphors in her poetry serve as "coding", or litotes, for meanings understood by other Blacks, although her themes and topics are universal for most readers to understand. Essick have called the poems in Diiie "protest poems". She acts as a spokesperson for her race in these poems, in which her use of irony and humor allows her to speak for the collective and to assume a distance in order to make comments about her themes, topics, and subjects. The eighteen poems in the second section, "Just Before the World Ends", focus on the experience of the survival of African Americans despite living in a society dominated by whites.Īngelou uses the vernacular of African Americans, irony, understatement, and humor to make her statements about race and racism in America. Many of the poems in this section and the next are structured like blues and jazz music, and have universal themes of love and loss. The 20 poems in the first section, "Where Love is a Scream of Anguish", center on love. ĭiiie is made up of two sections of 38 poems. Although her poetry collections have been best-sellers, they have not received serious critical attention and are more interesting when read aloud. Early in her writing career she began a practice of alternating the publication of an autobiography and a volume of poetry. Angelou considered herself a poet and a playwright, but is best known for her seven autobiographies. Many of the poems in Diiie were originally song lyrics, written during Angelou's career as a night club performer, and recorded on two albums before the publication of Angelou's first autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969). Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) is the first collection of poems by African-American writer and poet Maya Angelou. ![]()
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