Explication of "Woman Work"

Maya Angelou's poem entitled Woman Work is a piece exploring the grievances and escapism experienced by female laborer and mother. The narrator creates a list of necessary tasks and thus Angelou produces an anaphora, repeating the phrase "I've got" and "The..." (1-14). The purpose of this stanza is to communicate to the reader how exhausted, exhasperated and overworked this woman is. The final four lines also prove that she is an impoverished slave in that she lived in a hut, cuts sugar cane and picks cotton. The rhyme scheme of this particular refrain is seven consecutive couplets. This creates a singsong feel and serves to emphasize the monotony of her daily tasks.
The poem moves in a different direction in the following the opening the new rhyme scheme is ABCB. The second stanza evokes the soft and soothing effect of nature. Rain can "cool [her] brow again," (18) and give her respite. The second stanza  is less mellow in that the narrator asks "Storm blow me from here...'Til I can rest again" (19-22). This speaker is desperate for an escape and wishes to be blown by nature's "fiercest wind" (20) so as to "float across the sky" (21). Only an aggressive force, like the wind, can allow her to someday be free of the metaphorical chains she's held by. The third stanza describes the feeling of snow and the way it falls "gently" and "kisses" her allowing "rest tonight" (26).  She repeats "rest" so as to further emphasize her desperation. The closing of the poem is a listing of various aspects of nature and an assertion by the narrator that it is "all that I can call my own" (30). This woman is tired of subjecting herself to a miserable life of exhaustion and doing everything for everyone else. She cleans, cooks, works and tends to children and the sick. All this woman possesses is what nature freely gives her, for her life is in the hands of everybody else. She works tirelessly for their benefit and simply desires rest.