Still I Rise: Important Quotes Explained

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

These lines (lines 1–4) make up the poem’s opening stanza, and they immediately establish the speaker’s confrontational and defiant tone. She addresses an unspecified “you,” which, as the reader quickly realizes, refers to the oppressive dominant society in which she lives. The speaker begins the poem with a double-sided utterance. Even as she accuses this “you” of misrepresenting her people’s history and invites them to “trod [her] in the very dirt,” she also insists on her capacity to resist any and all attempts to suppress her.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

This quatrain (lines 13–16) appears as the poem’s fourth stanza, which consists entirely of rhetorical questions that are attuned to hurtful stereotypes about Black women as downcast and demure. Each question the speaker asks here serves a twofold purpose of acknowledgement and refusal. On the one hand, the speaker acknowledges how society expects her to act. At the same time, though, the irony of her rhetorical questions implies that she refuses to accept the validity of such expectations. If the “you” she addresses wants her to act weak and tormented, then they will be sorely disappointed!

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

These lines (lines 29–34) comprise the poem’s eighth stanza. In this stanza, the speaker begins to insert the refrain “I rise” between the longer lines, effectively breaking up the previously stable quatrain form. In addition to the insertion of the phrase “I rise,” the speaker also alters the rhyme scheme. Previous stanzas followed a strict ABCB rhyme scheme, but here she begins to use a couplet rhyme scheme—that is, AABB. By destabilizing the traditional quatrain form, the speaker signals her own desire to break free from limiting social constraints. She also underscores this desire to break free with her words, which articulate a longing to transcend the painful traumas of history and usher in a future characterized by the empowerment of Black women. The image she presents of herself as a wide and swelling ocean offers an especially powerful image of liberation. In contrast to the historical memory of the Atlantic Ocean as a conduit for the slave trade, the speaker reimagines the ocean as a space of fertility and rebirth.

I rise
I rise
I rise.

These lines (lines 41–43) conclude the poem with a threefold iteration of the speaker’s central message: the resilience that enables her to transcend oppression. The speaker uses versions of this phrase throughout the poem, culminating with the speaker’s insertion of the shortened refrain, “I rise,” as separate lines in the eighth and ninth stanzas. In these final three lines of the poem, however, the speaker achieves a unique effect that doesn’t appear elsewhere in the text. Here, the repetition of “I rise” functions like a mantra. Mantra is a word that comes from the Sanskrit language, and it’s used in Hindu and Buddhist meditation traditions to refer to a sound, word, or phrase that can be repeated to aid concentration. In the case of “Still I Rise,” the speaker uses the refrain “I rise” as a personal mantra that powerfully affirms her strength. More broadly, this mantra unites the poem’s themes of resilience, empowerment, and self-worth.