Poetry Comparison – Maya & Tupac Essay Example

"And the cotton to Pick" cotton also grows in USA. It's about this woman who's either single or doesn't get any help from her partner/husband. She's always doing something, looking after the children – "I've got the children to tend", housework – "I gotta clean up this hut", shopping – "The food to shop" or farm work, "The cane to be cut", "And the cotton to pick". There are several themes in "Woman work", one of them being Work.

We can see this in the first stanza . She lists all the things she's got to do. Another theme being loneliness. We can see this by the fact that she only mentions her children there, she may want someone to talk to her or help her with all her work. Mainly she just wants a rest, In "Woman Work" the poet Maya Angelou has made it so the reader can see a woman doing all this work in the reader's head, and how life must have been like for her. There are no similes in this poem.

None of the 5 stanza's are used to evoke reactions in the poem either. Woman Work" has a long forst stanza and all the other stanza's are 4 lines ones, The message that the poet is trying to get through to the reader in "Woman Work" is how horrible life can be and the things you have to do to live.

The second poem I will be analysing is I Ain’t Mad At Cha by Tupac Shakur.

Tupac Shakur was born on the 16th June 1971 in Manhattan, Nyc. At age 12, Shakur enrolled in Harlem's famous "127th Street Ensemble." His first

major role with this acting troupe was as Travis in A Raisin in the Sun. In 1984, his family relocated to Baltimore. After completing his sophomore year at Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School he transferred to the Baltimore School for the Arts, where he studied acting, poetry, and jazz. He performed in Shakespeare plays and in the role of the Mouse King in The Nutcracker. Tupac, accompanied by one of his friends, Dana "Mouse" Smith, as his beat box, won most of the many rap competitions that he participated in and was considered to be the best rapper in his school.

Although he lacked trendy clothing, he was one of the most popular kids in his school because of his sense of humour, superior rapping skills, and ability to mix in with all crowds.  He developed a close friendship with a young Jada Pinkett (later Jada Pinkett Smith) that lasted until Shakur's death. In the documentary Tupac: Resurrection, Shakur says, "Jada is my heart. She will be my friend for my whole life," and Smith calls Shakur "one of my best friends. He was like a brother. It was beyond friendship for us. The type of relationship we had, you only get that once in a lifetime.

Tupac Shakur was a member of the hip-hop group Digital Underground, whose 1990 album featured the hits "Humpty Dance" and "Doo wut chya like. " In 1992 he began his solo career, and his debut album 2Pacalypse Now propelled him to stardom and made him one of the more prominent practitioners of gangsta rap. His other albums and appearances in movies such as Juice (1992) and Poetic Justice (1993) helped

him to become a mainstream pop artist.Shakur made headlines over a string of run-ins with the law, and in 1994 he was robbed and shot five times.

He recovered and in the next year released the successful albums Me Against The World and All Eyez on Me. Embroiled in a complicated feud with fellow gangsta rappers, Shakur was murdered in Las Vegas in 1996. In the poem I Aint Mad At Cha personally I feel Tupac was addressing some of the people who might have been involved in his disappearance or "death". At the beginning of the song he starts by saying: "Change, sh*t I guess change is good for any of us Whatever it take for any of y'all niggaz to get up out the hood Shit, I'm wit cha, I ain't mad at cha Got nuttin but love for ya, do your thing boy" I believe that the message embedded within this is that he has no intention on criticising the ways of those who are doing what they have to do to get out of the ghetto.

"Yeah, all the homies that I ain't talk to in a while"I believe this is where he takes the song to its main course where he addresses possibly someone he knew from his past. I think the rest of the song kind of cues in on someone he knew from his past but now criticizes Tupac for the way he lives his life and eventually turns on him. I think the message behind the song has to do with how Tupac wanted to live his life making rap songs for money rather than dealing drugs for money.We

know that Tupac's death has been attributed to speculation about him creating his own label under the name "Makaveli" and possibly this was the reasoning behind: "So many questions, and they ask me if I'm still down I moved up out of the ghetto, so I ain't real now? " meaning he felt as if he had grown up and wasnt interested in dealing anymore but more focused on his music.

This song's music video came out after his death and has Tupac dressed as an angel in it so maybe there is a personal message within the lyrics we aren’t seeing.