The Full Text of “A Kind of Love, Some Say”
The Full Text of “A Kind of Love, Some Say”
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“A Kind of Love, Some Say” Introduction
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In "A Kind of Love, Some Say," Maya Angelou reflects on the workings of domestic violence. The poem's speaker—apparently a survivor of such abuse—reflects that, when one partner hurts another, they're trying to simplify the complicated problem of relationship. Infuriated by their own "limits" and seeking to control the person they abuse by reducing them to nothing more than a hurt body, they make themselves beastly in the process. This poem was first collected in Angelou's 1978 book And Still I Rise.
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“A Kind of Love, Some Say” Summary
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The speaker wonders whether it's true that one's ribs can tell the difference between being kicked by an animal and punched by one's lover. After one gets hit, the speaker says, the bruises on one's ribs remember the shock of the blow. Next come eyelids swollen from crying and looks of regret—looks that don't register romantic heartbreak, just pain.
Hate, the speaker reflects, doesn't understand a lot of things. It's limited—and it doesn't understand anything outside its limits. And people who enjoy causing pain never discover that love is inherently painful in a way that even a torture device can't equal.
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“A Kind of Love, Some Say” Themes
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Domestic Violence and Dehumanization
In “A Kind of Love, Some Say,” Maya Angelou reflects on the experience of domestic violence from the point of view of one who has suffered it. Looking back on a time when their lover hit them, the poem’s speaker wonders what separates the experience of being “kick[ed by] a beast” from the experience of being punched by a “lover’s fist.” The question suggests such violence reduces the violent person to beastliness and the abused person to just a bruised body. When the body gets hit, it simply feels that it’s been hit; an emotional understanding of what’s happening comes only after the blunt physical pain.
This brutish diminishment, this poem suggests, is one goal of domestic violence and the natural consequence of a violent person’s limited, “confused” perspective on love. A violent partner, Angelou suggests, is one who can’t tolerate the fact that their hatred’s “limits are in zones beyond itself.” In other words, they can’t bear what’s beyond them—as any separate person, no matter how close they are to you, must necessarily be. By lashing out, an abuser is showing that they can’t handle that inherent separateness. They want to reduce their partner to a hurt body, to something they can completely control, not an independent human being.
If the “sadists” who hurt their partners this way weren’t so deeply confused, Angelou’s speaker reflects, they would know that love inherently hurts more than hate ever can. Or, as she vividly puts it: “Love, by nature, exacts a pain / Unequalled on the rack.” This sad thought suggests that the deepest pain of domestic violence isn’t simply the physical pain of a blow from a “lover’s fist.” It’s the emotional pain of betrayal, the experience of finding that someone you believed loved you in fact just wanted to possess, control, and injure you.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-13
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “A Kind of Love, Some Say”
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Lines 1-3
Is it true ...
... Lover's fist?“A Kind of Love, Some Say” begins with a rhetorical question that makes it clear the title is painfully ironic. “Is it true,” the poem’s speaker wonders, that the body can distinguish between “the kick of a beast” and a blow from a “lover’s fist?” In other words: do bruised ribs register pain differently when it comes from an animal and when it comes from someone who’s supposed to love you?
This question has shock and pain built right into it. Being kicked by an animal and being punched by a lover obviously mean something different. But in the moment of violence, the speaker wonders if the body is just too overwhelmed by hurt to feel the distinction.
The phrasing of this question could suggest that domestic violence transforms the violent partner into a “beast.” And it’s relevant that the speaker uses the word “beast” specifically here: not, say, “donkey,” not even “animal.” The word makes the abuser sound, well, beastly, brutish and primitive and mindless. (Assonance connects the “ribs,” the “kick,” and the “fist,” too, giving the sound of this moment of violence a special intensity.)
Angelou will explore the speaker’s pain in a short, sharp form. The poem is just two stanzas long, written in free verse. Enjambments (like the surprising mid-sentence line break in “the kick of a beast from a / Lover’s fist”) help to capture the shock of violence, giving the poem a jarring, jagged rhythm.
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Lines 3-8
The bruised ...
... romance, but hurt. -
Lines 9-13
Hate often is ...
... on the rack.
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“A Kind of Love, Some Say” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Irony
This poem’s title, “A Kind of Love, Some Say,” takes a flatly ironic tone. This is a poem about domestic violence, a crime that many people have been inclined to excuse or write off as a “kind of love,” an excusable expression of overflowing passion. (One common version of this belief, for instance, might be that violent jealousy just shows how much one’s lover cares.)
“Some say” that—but this speaker isn’t one of them. Through a careful, measured examination of the particular pain of domestic abuse, this poem’s speaker makes it very clear that “love” that ends in violence isn’t love at all. Rather, it’s an expression of “confused” and “limit[ed]” hatred, the act of someone who isn’t able to understand what it really means to love someone. (For that matter, it’s the act of someone who doesn’t understand that the inherent, inevitable emotional pain of love is far worse than any pain a swung fist can dole out.)
The poem’s ironic title gives this poem a political as well as a personal meaning. By examining and reflecting on what appear to be their own dreadful, indelible experiences of domestic violence, this poem’s speaker gives the lie to anyone who says violence can be a “kind of love.”
Where irony appears in the poem: -
Aporia
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Personification
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Enjambment
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"A Kind of Love, Some Say" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Sadists
- Rack
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(Location in poem: Line 11: “Sadists will not learn”)
People who enjoy the pain and suffering of others.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “A Kind of Love, Some Say”
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Form
"A Kind of Love, Some Say," like a lot of Maya Angelou's poetry, is written in free verse—that is, verse that doesn't use a regular rhyme scheme or meter. It's divided into two unequal stanzas, a structure that allows the speaker to make two observations: the first stanza tracks an immediate, visceral moment of violence, while the second pronounces on the limits of hate and the pains of love. The movement from the drawn-out first stanza to the shorter, quieter, more reflective second stanza suggests the movement of the speaker's experience: out from the shock and pain of domestic abuse and into a sad, hard-earned wisdom.
The poem is also marked by a lot of sharp enjambments, as in this example from lines 1-3:
Is it true the ribs can tell
The kick of a beast from a
Lover's fist? [...]In a poem about violence, all those enjambments make sense: lines break as suddenly and jarringly as the blow of a "lover's fist" breaks the trust and affection between a couple.
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Meter
Written in free verse, "A Kind of Love, Some Say" doesn't use a regular meter. Angelou gives the poem a jagged, spiky rhythm through frequent abrupt enjambments and caesurae, which chop long sentences into short, sharp bits. Listen to the rhythm of this passage in lines 3-8, for instance:
[...] The bruised
Bones recorded well
The sudden shock, the
Hard impact. || Then swollen lids,
Sorry eyes, || spoke not
Of lost romance, but hurt.The breaks in these lines land as suddenly as unexpected punches, helping to capture the speaker's pain and shock—both physical and emotional—at the memory of their lover turning on them.
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Rhyme Scheme
There's no rhyme scheme in this free verse poem. Instead, Angelou laces the poem with sonic devices, especially consonance. Tough, sharp sounds help to evoke the nastiness and pain of domestic abuse, making the poem's violence shock the ear as well as the mind. This selection from the first three lines offers a good example:
Is it true the ribs can tell
The kick of a beast from a
Lover's fist? [...]Consonance, assonance, and alliteration make this passage feel all of a piece: it's full of hissing /st/, growling /r/, and sharp /t/ consonants, as well as a repeated thin /ih/ vowel. These harsh and tightly woven sounds give extra force to the painful question that opens the poem.
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“A Kind of Love, Some Say” Speaker
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The poem's speaker is a thoughtful person who seems to have suffered a lot in their time. Though they never say so explicitly, it seems likely that they have been a victim of the kind of domestic abuse they describe in the poem's first stanza. They can speak with painful familiarity of how "bruised bones" remember the "sudden shock" of a "lover's fist" turned against them. They remember, too, what it feels like to have "sorry eyes" in the wake of such violence—to feel the pain and regret that their violent partner doesn't seem capable of.
This awful experience, at least, has given them a certain kind of wisdom. Examining the experience of domestic violence, they have learned that "hate often is confused": the kind of hatred that makes people lash out against their lovers is born of limitation, a failure to feel or to comprehend love itself. This speaker can say so because they do know what love feels like—and they know it's inherently a lot more painful than any physical pain could be. (Perhaps that's particularly true for a person who has truly loved a violent partner: the pain of betrayal outpaces the pain of the violence itself.)
The title Angelou gives this poem—"A Kind of Love, Some Say"—thus feels frankly ironic. This poem's speaker knows all too well that anyone who claims violence might be a sign of love doesn't understand what they're talking about.
Sadly, readers might easily be able to interpret the speaker as Angelou, who was herself a survivor of domestic abuse and spoke openly about her terrible experiences.
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“A Kind of Love, Some Say” Setting
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There's no clear setting in "A Kind of Love, Some Say." Unfortunately, the poem could be set in just about any time or place worldwide: anywhere one lover has lashed out violently against another.
But perhaps the poem's reflections are colored by the historical context in which it was written. Angelou published the poem in her 1978 collection And Still I Rise, a book published during the second-wave feminist movement. One of the many misogynistic injustices that this women's movement spoke out against was domestic violence, a crime overwhelmingly perpetrated by men against women. (Angelou herself was a survivor of such violence.) Such violence was once often swept under the rug as a private matter—or even normalized and romanticized, as this poem's title suggests. Angelou and feminists like her demanded that intimate partner abuse be recognized as the violent crime it is.
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Literary and Historical Context of “A Kind of Love, Some Say”
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Literary Context
Maya Angelou (1928-2014) was one of the most beloved American writers of the 20th century. She first became famous for her memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, in which she describes her troubled childhood with an honesty and openness that many of her early critics found shocking—and many of her early readers found moving and inspiring. Over the course of her long career, she would write a whole series of memoirs, as well as many books of poetry. "A Kind of Love, Some Say" first appeared in her acclaimed 1978 collection And Still I Rise.
Angelou was a member of the Black Arts Movement, a cultural movement that sprang up in Harlem in the 1960s and '70s. In response to oppression, violence, and racism, Black writers and artists including Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, and Etheridge Knight sought to foster a Black artistic community free from the dominance of White society. Their work centered Black experiences and conjured new visions of justice and social change.
As a Black American poet and memoirist, Angelou also saw herself as a member of a literary tradition that included writers like Langston Hughes and Paul Laurence Dunbar. She was also good friends with the essayist and novelist James Baldwin; the two were major voices in the Civil Rights movement. In turn, Angelou has influenced countless people, from the cartoonist Keith Knight to the former U.S. President Barack Obama.
Historical Context
With its ambiguous setting, this poem doesn't have a clear historical context itself. But it was published in 1978, during a time of intense social and political ferment in the United States. Angelou was an active and powerful participant in the Civil Rights and feminist movements of the era, fighting in particular for Black women's rights.
In particular, this poem deals with domestic violence, one of the major issues that second-wave feminism confronted. Angelou was one of many women demanding that men's violence against their female partners be recognized as a serious crime, not a private matter or a shame for a female victim to conceal. This poem's title, "A Kind of Love, Some Say," ironically jabs at an even more disturbing misconception: that violence against a partner might just be a good sign, a mark of strong romantic feeling.
Angelou herself was a domestic violence survivor, and her openness about her experience made her a powerful advocate for women who had suffered as she had. There's even an anti-domestic-violence organization named after her.
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More “A Kind of Love, Some Say” Resources
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External Resources
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An Interview with Angelou — Watch a video interview with Angelou from the CBC.
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Angelou's Legacy — Visit a website dedicated to Angelou's life and work.
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A Brief Biography — Read the Poetry Foundation's biography of Angelou.
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Angelou the Survivor — Read about Angelou's own harrowing experience of domestic abuse.
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A Portrait of Angelou — Take a look at a memorial portrait of Angelou housed in Washington, D.C.'s National Portrait Gallery.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Maya Angelou
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