Poems that evoke pride often celebrate personal or cultural achievements, self-respect, and dignity. They may honor the accomplishments of individuals, communities, or entire nations.
For instance, in ‘Still I Rise‘ by Maya Angelou, the speaker triumphantly asserts her resilience and self-worth. The language used in these poems is often powerful and assertive, filled with confidence and self-affirmation. They inspire readers to reflect on their own accomplishments and values, fostering a sense of satisfaction and self-pride.
‘Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem’ by Helene Johnson is a deeply affecting poem that lucidly attempts to uncover a man’s shortcomings alongside all that makes his superbly admirable.
The source of the man's confidence in the poem is perceived as being rooted in a certain ambiguous pride he has for himself. The speaker indirectly ties it to their Black identity and celebrates them for being such a brash vision of it. As a result, the poem is filled with an invigorating sense of pride.
‘Love of Country’ presents a world in which patriotism is the most important virtue of all and the lack of it is unforgivable.
The pride that the narrator feels everybody should have in their nation is infectious, even if only to avoid his wrath if one fails to express it appropriately.
Celebrating the beauty of diligence, Marge Piercy’s ‘To be of use’ draws powerful metaphors between humans and enduring animals.
Pride radiates through ‘To Be of Use’ as the speaker honors those who “pull like water buffalo, with massive patience.” The poem reveres the kind of work that requires endurance, patience, and physical effort, and there’s immense pride in the way it frames labor as something noble and essential. The poem’s language reflects pride not in personal achievements, but in shared human effort and the timeless satisfaction of a job well done.
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
‘We See You’ is a powerful declaration of support for women’s football and a celebration of the people who make the game great.
This poem is one of the most moving and impactful poetic renderings of pride in recent times. Carol Ann Duffy's enthusiasm for the achievements of the women she describes is palpable and blends with a form of national pride in ways that ordinarily connote exclusion or fear. However, in this poem, the national and personal feelings of pride blend together perfectly.
That rain-heavy, leather ball your left foot smashed a century ago
has reached us here, and so we see you, Lily Parr,
in hindsight’s extra time; linked to our female, family chain
of passing forwards… to Mary Phillip, first black Captain
‘Identity Card’ by Mahmoud Darwish reckons passionately and angrily with the realities of Palestinian displacement and their oppressive treatment.
Pride is the dominant sentiment expressed by the poem. It is this pride that drives the speaker, giving them both the courage to stand up for themselves and to outline all the ways their oppression proves they're what they say they are: an Arab. The portrait that Darwish paints is a complicated one, filled with sorrow and rage, yet it's also resilient and defiantly persevering.
‘Worth’ by Marilyn Nelson wrestles for an answer regarding both who and by what means do we prescribe value to other people and ourselves.
Nelson's poem also champions a sense of pride over their Black identity. Despite the history of the slave trade and the engrained devaluation of Black lives, they choose to look only inward to find worth in themselves. Effectively rejecting any authority that isn't the individual when it comes to determining the value of a human life.
Today in America people were bought and sold:
five hundred for a "likely Negro wench."
If someone at auction is worth her weight in gold,
The poem ‘When I Was Fair and Young’ by Queen Elizabeth I describes pride’s consequences, regret, and redemption through the intervention of love.
Pride is depicted here through the show’s representation of the speaker boasting in the beginning by waving them off as mere suitors because she knows that men are attracted to her beauty and she is superior. This pride which she has leads her to reject love and distance herself emotionally. The poem deals with such pride and shows readers and listeners how it leads to regret.
When I was fair and young, then favor graced me.
Of many was I sought their mistress for to be.
But I did scorn them all and answered them therefore:
Go, go, go, seek some other where; importune me no more.
‘In Celebration of My Uterus’ by Anne Sexton is an uplifting poem about the meaning of womanhood. The poem explores Sexton’s perspective on feminine identity.
Considering Sexton's struggle with her identity before writing this poem, her pride in being a woman is more evident than any other emotion. One can tell she has finally come to accept her femininity and even give it her own meaning. This is especially seen in stanza four, where she expresses a desire to be all her definition of a woman entails.
‘Ain’t That Bad?’ by Maya Angelou is a celebration of Black culture and identity. The poem focuses on aspects of African-American life and contributions.
Throughout this poem, the poet expresses pride in the community she's a part of and wants to inspire that same pride in those reading the text. She turns words that were originally meant to demean into positives and celebrates language, art, and music.
‘Epigram Engraved on the Collar of a Dog’ is a humorous, playful, and extremely concise poem that presents the dog’s feelings of superiority.
The poem expresses a great deal of pride on behalf of the dog and a strong sense of superiority compared to other pets. This is primarily achieved through an arrogant, sarcastic, and condescending tone.
Plath’s ‘Mushrooms’ uses a creative metaphor of mushrooms to represent the struggle of marginalized sections, widely interpreted to be women.
To emphasize the greatness of the mushrooms' exceptional triumph against all odds, the speaker paints a picture of their adverse circumstances and the expected repression of progress if they were found out. Their tone captures the anguish of oppression and the pride in the mushrooms' united power and inner strength, including remarkable courage, perseverance, resilience, and patience, leading to a sense of empowerment from the degraded state of voicelessness. The speaker's pride becomes most evident in the vehement repetition of 'So many of us!/So many of us!', implying collective strength with exceptional inner qualities.
‘Stream of Life’ by Rabindranath Tagore explores life’s interconnectedness, comparing it to a flowing stream connecting all existence.
Tagore instills pride in human existence by highlighting its connection to the vast, eternal life force. The speaker feels proud to be part of this universal flow, and readers share this pride in humanity's meaningful role within the cosmos, as emphasized through the imagery of streams and oceans.
The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.
It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
Donne’s ‘Death, be not proud,’ rooted in the Christian idea of the afterlife, challenges the personified death, exposing its illusory power.
The speaker aims to debunk death's supposed pride and expose its fearsome aura as fraudulent as he firmly asserts, 'Death, be not proud.' He attempts to shatter this pride by confronting death with the truth of its nature. He reveals death's delusions of power, pointing out that it is merely a servant to 'fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,' akin to lowly things like poison and war. The speaker's forceful questioning, 'why swell's thou then?' underscores the futility of death's pride.
‘Homosexuality’ by Frank O’Hara looks at the way the homosexuals were treated in the 1960s, looking at ideas of judgment and acceptance.
In the first half of the poem, the poet seems upset at the idea of having to hide themselves because of the judgment of others. However, as the poem continues, they begin to express genuine pride for their community and who they are. They express this with defiance and do not seem to care about the judgment of others. They want to share who they are and the community that they are a part of with others, and the poet achieves this by sharing details of his community with the reader in the second half of the poem.
So we are taking off our masks, are we, and keeping
our mouths shut? as if we'd been pierced by a glance!
The song of an old cow is not more full of judgment
than the vapors which escape one's soul when one is sick;
Langston Hughes’ ‘I, Too, Sing America’ delves into the experience of a Black man navigating American society, emphasizing his equal claim to the American identity.
The speaker’s pride in identity permeates the poem, evident in the bold assertion, “I, too, am America.” This pride, unshaken by exclusion, serves as both resistance and reclamation of belonging. Hughes infuses dignity into his language, challenging societal marginalization. The brevity, however, limits deeper exploration of the complexities of this pride.
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