Literary device of "Still I rise"

There are many literary devices in Maya Angelou's poem "Still I Rise". 
First, there are the obvious similes that Maya uses throughout the poem such as comparing  herself to dust or to air using the word like to make the comparisons. 
Another commonly used literary device is the metaphor. In the eighth stanza, Maya refers to herself as a black ocean. She shares the quality of being powerful and strong with the ocean and makes the comparison without using the words like or as.
Maya uses yet another popular literary device known as the idiom.  In the sixth stanza, Maya tells the reader You may shoot me..., You may cut me..., You may kill me..., all of which are to be taken figuratively not literally. 
The poem also uses repetition in the last two stanzas.  Maya repeats the phrase I rise several times throughout.  Repetition is used here to deliver the powerful message that she will not stay down and be defeated.
 
And finally, Maya uses the literary device of allusion in stanzas two and five when she mentions oil wells and gold mines.  These two examples are used to bring the idea of wealth into the readers' minds without having to explicitly say the term within the poem.
 
 
 

There are many literary devices in Maya Angelou's poem "Still I Rise." First, she uses many similes to compare two unrelated things using "like" or "as." For example, in the first stanza, she says she'll rise just like the dust. She also compares herself to suns and moons, and the "certainty of tides" in the third stanza. She uses similes to compare how she will rise just as surely as the sun and moon rise. In the fourth stanza, she compares her shoulders to teardrops, saying:  

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

Another literary device Angelou uses is repetition. She repeats the phrase "I rise" many times throughout the poem. This is a literary device poets often use to emphasize a concept or idea.
 
Angelou also employs the use of metaphor in her poem. "I am a black ocean, leaping and wide. Welling and swelling, I bear in the tide." 
 
In the sixth stanza, Angelou uses hyperbole as well as metaphor. It can be argued that the figurative language used in this stanza is metaphorical because she is comparing words to weapons with the capability to kill or wound. It is my opinion that it is hyperbole, as well, because this statement exaggerates the effect that words will have on her: 


"You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise."