My Culture Topic

Emily Dickinson

Maya Angelou

Because I already told you about the presentations I watched, I want to talk a bit about my own. Let’s begin with why I chose the topic Two Famous American Women Poets. The answer is actually pretty simple, I wanted to talk about women. Alright, to be honest my first idea was to talk about same-sex marriage but as that topic was already taken I had to decide for something else. At first I didn’t even know what exactly I should write about, I mean there is quite much you can write about women. To get myself inspired I went through a list of topic ideas our teacher recommended, where I came across a title about authors. I then decided I would write about female writer. In another list of famous writer I finally came across Emily Dickinson and my teacher would later suggest I should talk about Maya Angelou as well, as I really wanted to talk about a black woman too. I suppose I couldn’t have made a better choice as there couldn't be two more different women, only connected through poetry.
So I wrote the essay we had to write before working on our presentation and became rather fond of the two women, especially Emily Dickinson. A shy woman with health issues and anxiety problems, staying nearly all her life at the family estate, writing about life, death and immortality. I have yet to read more of her work but I wanted to know Because I could not stop for Death by heart the first time I read it. And while I came to really like Emily Dickinson I admire Maya Angelou. Especially with Angelou I had the feeling I had not enough time to write and later talk about her. There is so much to know and so much to talk about that it nearly felt wrong to just have so little time to talk about her. Sadly, on the day I handed in my essay and before I began to work on my presentation I read in the news that she had passed away.
For the presentation itself I decided to concentrate on two of their poems, for Emily Dickinson it was Because I could not stop for Death and for Maya Angelou it was a part of On the Pulse of Morning. I read the first one as a whole and the beginning of Angelou’s poem. To be honest, it was much harder for me to find the rhythm in On the Pulse of Morning than it was with the other one. And even just with those two examples I am already amazed at how much they differ from each other.
I really have to say that both of them are very fascinating women and they are worth the time learning more about them. I still wish I had had a bit more time to talk about them but maybe I will get another chance some other time. Because I could not stop for Death by Emily Dickinson first part of On the Pulse of Morning by Maya Angelou