Maya Angelou (5 page)

When she was young, Angelou was intrigued by several white women poets. She appreciated the romantic and lyrical qualities of Emily Dickinson (1830–1886); echoes of Dickinson's familiar ballad form can be heard in some of Angelou's poems. She also enjoyed the passion of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) and the caustic humor of Dorothy Parker (1893–1967): “They are funny and wry,” she remarked in appreciation of Millay and Parker. “I'm rarely wry. I think I'm funny. I love to be funny” (“Icon” 1997).

When asked about the influence of African and Asian poets on her work she clearly acknowledged Kwesi Brew, the Ghanaian poet to whom she refers in
All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes
and in
A Song Flung Up
. “Oh yes,” she told me, “Kwesi influenced me and still does. But the early influences, I had no idea African poets even existed early on.” She explained that African poets were not published in the United States while she was growing up. One of the first African poets who came to her attention was Senegalese statesman Leopold Senghor, and that was not until she was an adult. She was more familiar with Chinese and Japanese poets than with African poets because they were available (“Icon” 1997).

Following her first volume with Random House in 1971, Angelou published at least eight separate volumes and a number of separately published ceremonial poems. Her best-loved poems—“Phenomenal Woman,” “And Still I Rise,” and “Willie”—were included in
The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou
(Random House, 1994). In 2015 Random House released an updated volume of the poetry, entitled
Maya Angelou: The Complete Poetry
. Poems discussed in this chapter are from the 2015 edition and are indicated parenthetically in the text by the initials CP. She also published many other poems, either separately or in special collections.

The dual nature of Angelou's talent is underscored by the fact that within several years of each other, her work earned two major nominations. The first,
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
, received the National Book Award nomination in 1970. One year later a collection of poetry,
Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Diiie
, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. She could have achieved a distinguished writing career pursuing either one of these genres. Astonishingly, she did both, so that in the prolific 1970s and 1980s a new book of poetry emerged shortly before or after a new autobiography.

According to Lyman B. Hagen, “Angelou's poems are dramatic and lyrical. Her style is open, direct, unambiguous, and conversational. The diction is plain but sometimes the metaphors are quite striking” (1997, 130). Of the various topics treated in her poetry, the most frequent seem to be love, black men, black women, drugs, religion, and slavery. Often these inter-related themes are held together by references to
song
, as in the 1983 collection
Shaker, Why Don't You Sing
.

Like the Protestant hymn and like the blues, Angelou's poems often introduce a major clause that is repeated throughout the remaining stanzas. Music historian Le Roi Jones (Amiri Baraka) once defined the blues as a “verse form” having a specific social context that includes “love, sex, tragedy in interpersonal relationships, death, travel, loneliness, etc.” (1963, 50). Angelou uses blues themes throughout
The Complete Poetry
, for example, in “No Loser, No Weeper” (CP 12) and in “Now Long Ago” (CP 68).

In
Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Diiie
Angelou began experimenting not only with African American musical patterns but also with the creation of a
persona
through whom she could express her emotions. The “I” of “No Loser, No Weeper” is not Angelou but a jealous woman who addresses a rival. Similarly, her famous “phenomenal woman” is not necessarily the poet but a universal woman who exhibits feelings of strength and overwhelming pride.

“Phenomenal Woman” (CP 126–27) is one of Angelou's best-loved poems. The
persona
or narrative voice is a large, heel-clicking female of
unspecified race, although most readers would assume her to be black. The poem consists of four stanzas of more than a dozen lines each, with each stanza divided by the words “I say,” followed by a recital of female attributes—flashing eyes, riding breasts, arching back, clicking heels, and so forth. Angelou had recited and recorded “Phenomenal Woman” so often that critics assume that the poet is the subject, the “I” of the poem. I would argue instead that although the subject has certain predominant African American features, “Phenomenal Woman” can be convincingly performed by a dynamic woman of any race and of smaller stature.

“Still I Rise” (CP 159–60) has a similar hypnotic power. The boastful narrator taunts a “You,” who appears to be white. The poem begins in ballad form; it then changes tempo in the eighth and ninth stanzas, becoming a series of couplets punctuated by the words “I rise.” Metaphors reveal that the narrator is black (“I'm a black ocean”) and female (“I've got diamonds / At the meeting of my thighs….”) The word
rise
appears ten times in the poem and is a constant rhyme word. The accumulation of rising sounds creates an upward movement, a worldly resurrection. Both in her poetry and in her prose Angelou was captivated by the notion of rising, an idea that is implied in the UP-word of her 2002 autobiography,
A Song Flung Up
. Her concept of rising seems to echo the Old and New Testaments, the
Baptist Hymnal
, the Negro spiritual, and other sources.

Unfortunately, Angelou's poetry is not always pristine. Too often she employs large words unnecessarily, for example, in “California Prodigal” (CP 137–38), where words such as
phantasmatalities
and
fulminant
are inaccessible to the casual reader. This occasional use of pedantic language contrasts sharply with Angelou's more direct and intense lyrics, especially “The Traveler” (CP 153), an eight-line ballad that addresses the theme of loneliness, and “When Great Trees Fall” (CP 258–59), a moving poem about lost souls.

If Angelou had written only this collection of poems she would still have had a dedicated following, especially among college audiences, where she would entrance the crowd with her sharp wit and her vibrant poetry. By the time she was in her sixties she had become a television personality, known for her earlier role in Alex Haley's
Roots
(1977), for her 1993 Grammy Award for Best-Spoken Word Album (
Essence
2014, 109), and for her numerous appearances on the Oprah Winfrey Show. In addition, her popular lectures on university campuses gave Dr. Angelou a visibility unusual among American poets. An aware public immediately recognized her expressive face and her deep voice.

However, she received her greatest public recognition when, at the age of sixty-five, she read “On the Pulse of Morning” at the 1993 inauguration of
William Clinton. Many critics think that Angelou's ultimate greatness will be attributed to two achievements: her first autobiography,
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
, and her poem “On the Pulse of Morning,” works in two different genres written more than two decades apart. It was not only the inauguration poem itself; it was also the vitality of her performance, as she used skills gleaned from years of acting and speaking to arouse the nation.

Before Angelou, only one other American poet, Robert Frost, had read an inauguration poem, at the swearing in of John F. Kennedy in 1961. Angelou was the first black, the first woman. When Maya Angelou read “On the Pulse of Morning,” she bathed in the magic then surrounding the new administration. The poem, like the incoming president, offered the dream of hope—for Native Americans, gays, the homeless, Eskimos, Jews, West Africans, and Muslims. It is a long poem, over one hundred lines, televised on satellite and delivered electronically around the world. Clippings and reviews on file at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture—from Spain, New Zealand, the Netherlands, England, and Vatican City—confirm the ode's positive reception throughout the modern world.

Angelou's theatrical rendering of “On the Pulse of Morning” is above all a return to African American oral tradition, when slaves like Frederick Douglass stood on platforms in abolitionist meeting halls to register their concerns about the slave system. The ode also echoes the rhetorical grace of the African American sermon, as practiced and modified by Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Jesse Jackson, and Louis Farrakhan.

“On the Pulse of Morning” (CP 263–66) is a poem rich with contemporary references to toxic waste and pollution—the subjects of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. References to mastodons and dinosaurs suggest the prehistoric beasts of Steven Spielberg's 1993 film,
Jurassic Park
. In these and other instances Angelou writes with passion about contemporary concerns.

The inaugural ode is also influenced, as are the autobiographies, by numerous African American poets through the oral tradition of spirituals like “Roll, Jordan, Roll” and the written poetry of Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, and others—influences that I have addressed in greater detail in my essay published in the commemorative issue of
College Language Association Journal
. In addition, “On the Pulse of Morning” contains echoes of modern African poets and folk artists such as Kwesi Brew and Efua Sutherland, artists who helped Angelou make contact with African religious beliefs and contemporary African poetry. Finally, “On the Pulse of Morning” is a semiautobiographical poem, one that emerges from her conflicts as an
American; her experiences as a traveler; her achievements in public speaking and acting; and her wisdom, gleaned from years of self-exploration.

In the next sixteen years Angelou further demonstrated her strength as a poet/performer in front of mass audiences. Her achievements include “A Brave and Startling Truth” (June 1995), written to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the United Nations; the “Million Man March Poem” (October 16, 1995), read before a huge crowd in Washington, D.C.; “Amazing Peace” (December 1, 2005), a poem that celebrated the lighting of the National Christmas Tree; “Mother: A Cradle to Hold Me,” a mass-marketed poem in praise of her mother, Vivian Baxter (2006); a prose/poem in honor of Hilary Clinton published in the
London Observer
on January 20, 2008; an elegy, “We Had Him,” written by Angelou but recited by the actress Queen Latifah at the funeral of singer Michael Jackson in July 2009; and “His Day Is Done,” an elegy for the South African leader Nelson Mandela (December 10, 2013). These poems, many still available on YouTube and other audio and visual sites, are assurances that Angelou's fame, like Michael Jackson's, will outlast their deaths. The 2015 Random House edition of her poetry contains the long poems listed earlier, as well as a poem on Oprah Winfrey's fiftieth birthday: a poem written for the Children's Defense Fund; a poem about her ancestors; a poem celebrating a boy's Bar Mitzvah; a vigil to the Creator; a prayer to “Father Mother God”; and a poem on the occasion of the 2008 Olympics. The elegy to Michael Jackson is not included.

Each of Angelou's commemorative poems befits a poet laureate—one who is singled out for a significant achievement, especially in the arts or sciences. In England, poet laureates William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson were appointed to write verse on grand occasions. In some American jurisdictions, in the state of Maryland, for example, there is a state laureate, an office that African American poet Lucille Clifton (1936–2012) held for several years. Clifton was the author of many compassionate poems, including “Miss Rosie,” a blues tribute to a haggard “wet brown bag of a woman” who had once been the prize of Georgia. Angelou cites “Miss Rosie” in
Even the Stars Look Lonesome
(1997, 121–22), feeling that the poem explains how the poor and lonely are still able to stand up and reach for a higher place in society.

The United States has had a national poet laureate since 1986, when Robert Penn Warren was the first person to be bestowed with that honor. The position is attached to that of the poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, with the poet laureate a spokesperson for the arts who is required to give at least one public reading a year. Angelou, so closely connected to
the African American tradition represented by Lucille Clifton and by former American laureate Rita Dove, was always exploring her own desire to create meaningful art, what she calls “art for the sake of the soul” (
Stars
119). Yet despite Angelou's increasing productivity and her performances at national and international celebrations, and although she had many fans who thought she really
was
the country's poet laureate, Maya Angelou was never appointed to that official position (Armenti 2014).

In a 1986 essay, “My Grandson, Home at Last,” published in the popular magazine,
Woman's Day
, Angelou traced the efforts to rescue Guy's son, Colin, who had been kidnapped by Guy's estranged wife. The story, written from a grandmother's perspective, describes Guy's pain as a parent and reminds the reader of Maya's own anxiety as she tried to recover Guy from his own kidnapping by Big Mary Dalton, related in the powerful sequence of mother-loss in
Gather Together
.

The delicate personal essay in
Woman's Day
seems to be the antecedent of two books of prose reflections, what Angelou's publisher labels on the dust jacket of
Even the Stars Look Lonesome
a “wise book.” A wise book; a collection of informal essays; a series of musings, observations, meditations, or reflections, often interspersed with poetry—each term aptly describes the unconfined genre that Angelou had selected for her more casual prose writings.

The first of the two reflections,
Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now
(1993), is dedicated to her close friend, the prodigious talk-show hostess Oprah Winfrey. The title is from a Negro spiritual, part of which Angelou sang during the “Icon” interview. “It's such a great song, you know. It's a song from slavery. It's got the most amazing kind of spirit.” Then, without a pause, Angelou started to sing: “I'm on my journey now / Mt. Zion…And I wouldn't take nothin'/ for my journey now” (“Icon” 1997).