Poetry has never been my strong suit. Sure, I went through a phase in my teens where I read Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Shakespeare, and Edgar Allen Poe, but I didn’t stumble across Maya Angelou until I was in college. I heard someone read Phenomenal Woman and was captivated. I was blessed to have an opportunity to see Maya Angelou perform when I was at graduate school in person in the late 80’s (don’t bother doing the math, I’m old). Even thirty plus years later, I still get chills when I think of it.
To speak of Maya Angelou as merely a poet is barely scraping the surface of her talent and accomplishments. She was an actress, author, dancer, singer, civil rights activist, mother and overall great person. As a child in the 70’s, I remember watching I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings on television. If you haven’t read the book, get it. If you haven’t seen the movie, watch it. Caged Bird was the story of how as a small child, she stopped speaking for five years after she identified the person who raped her and he was killed. She ends the story when she becomes a mother at sixteen. Her life was so rich and full, that Caged Bird is the first of seven volumes which covers a life of eighty-six years from life with her grandmother during segregation in the Deep South to her life in Chicago, New York, Ghana, and the world. Many Americans were introduced to her through the poem she wrote and read, On the Pulse of Morning, for President Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/48990.
When I think of watching her perform live, I am in awe. The beauty of watching Maya Angelou (and probably any poet) read their own work is hearing the emphasis placed on not just the words, but the pauses. The rhythm and the facial expressions brought the words to life. In between readings, she sang songs and told stories. She made us laugh, think and more than a few of us wiped away tears. She had a gift. Her body of work lives on and continues to touch and change the world. She was a Phenomenal Woman who despite hardships and abuse declared, Still I Rise.