<P> Beginning with Caged Bird, Angelou used the same "writing ritual" for many years . She would get up at five in the morning and check into a hotel room, where the staff were instructed to remove any pictures from the walls . She wrote on yellow legal pads while lying on the bed, with a bottle of sherry, a deck of cards to play solitaire, Roget's Thesaurus, and the Bible, and left by the early afternoon . She averaged 10--12 pages of material a day, which she edited down to three or four pages in the evening . Lupton stated that this ritual indicated "a firmness of purpose and an inflexible use of time". Angelou went through this process to give herself time to turn the events of her life into art, and to "enchant" herself; as she said in a 1989 interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation, to "relive the agony, the anguish, the Sturm und Drang". She placed herself back in the time she wrote about, even during traumatic experiences like her rape in Caged Bird, to "tell the human truth" about her life . Critic Opal Moore says about Caged Bird: "...Though easily read, (it) is no' easy read"'. Angelou stated that she played cards to reach that place of enchantment, to access her memories more effectively . She has stated, "It may take an hour to get into it, but once I'm in it--ha! It's so delicious!" She did not find the process cathartic; rather, she found relief in "telling the truth". </P> <P> When selecting a title, Angelou turned to Paul Laurence Dunbar, an African - American poet whose works she had admired for years . Jazz vocalist and civil rights activist Abbey Lincoln suggested the title . According to Lyman B. Hagen, the title pulls Angelou's readers into the book while reminding them that it is possible to both lose control of one's life and to have one's freedom taken from them . Angelou has credited Dunbar, along with Shakespeare, with forming her "writing ambition". The title of the book comes from the third stanza of Dunbar's poem "Sympathy": </P> <P> I know why the caged bird sings, ah me, When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore, When he beats his bars and would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core, But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings--I know why the caged bird sings . </P> <P> I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings follows Marguerite's (called "My" or "Maya" by her brother) life from the age of three to seventeen and the struggles she faces--particularly with racism--in the Southern United States . Abandoned by their parents, Maya and her older brother Bailey are sent to live with their paternal grandmother (Momma) and crippled uncle (Uncle Willie) in Stamps, Arkansas . Maya and Bailey are haunted by their parents' abandonment throughout the book--they travel alone and are labeled like baggage . </P>

I know why the caged bird sings poem explanation