A Woman of Many Worlds and One
Last week, this post began a series featuring representatives of Womankind and their poetry. As I said last week, the tally reveals that since Wannaskan Almanac began, out of roughly 208 posts (not counting 2022) less than ten women were presented, excluding the poems offered by yours truly. Imagination! I have begun and will continue to make amends for ignoring my own gender.
Maya Angelou was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri in April 1928; she died on 28 May 2014 in Winston-Salem North Carolina. Her many accomplishments range from being the first Black female streetcar conductor to being only the second poet to recite at a presidential inauguration.
She wrote a couple of dozen books. At one time, she boasted three titles on the New York Times best-seller list – simultaneously. In 1993 when she recited at Bill Clinton’s presidential inauguration, she was only the second poet to do so since Robert Frost in 1961. to write and recite a poem at a presidential inaugural ceremony.
Choosing representative poems from Angelou’s work is challenging, to put it mildly. I decided to share her most famous poem, “Caged Bird,” and another titled “Kin” – lesser known but in its own way, as brilliant as “Caged Bird.”
A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own.
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
FOR BAILEY
We were entwined in red rings
Of blood and loneliness before
The first snows fell
Before muddy rivers seeded clouds
Above a virgin forest, and
Men ran naked, blue and black
Skinned into the warm embraces
Of Sheba, Eve and Lilith.
I was your sister.
You left me to force strangers
Into brother molds, exacting
Taxations they never
Owed or could ever pay.
You fought to die, thinking
In destruction lies the seed
Of birth. You may be right.
I will remember silent walks in
Southern woods and long talks
In low voices
Shielding meaning from the big ears
Of overcurious adults.
You may be right.
Your slow return from
Regions of terror and bloody
Screams, races my heart.
I hear again the laughter
Of children and see fireflies
Bursting tiny explosions in
An Arkansas twilight.
Background: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Angelou was encouraged by author James Baldwin and Robert Loomis, an editor at Random House, to write an autobiography. Initially, Angelou declined the offers, but eventually changed her mind and wrote I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The book chronicles Angelou’s childhood and ends with the birth of her son. It won immediate success and was nominated for a National Book Award.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first of Angelou’s six autobiographies. It is widely taught in schools, though it has faced controversy over its portrayal of race, sexual abuse and violence. Angelou’s use of fiction-writing techniques like dialogue and plot in her autobiographies was innovative for its time and helped, in part, to complicate the genre’s relationship with truth and memory. Though her books are episodic and tightly crafted, the events seldom follow a strict chronology and are arranged to emphasize themes.
Background: Kin
Angelou has written that when she uses the pronoun I, she is referring to a collective we. In Kin, it’s clear to see that her narrator speaks for a larger human experience. The poem, which is dedicated to her brother, is a dramatic monologue with short, unrhymed lines. It takes familial closeness as its theme, with the shared memories and shared suffering that come with being part of a group. The narrator also associates herself with three powerful females in human history and, in doing so, speaks to and for the people.
Exploration 1: Angelou wrote six autobiographies. Most authors of this genre write one, at most two books with their own lives as the subject matter. Speculate why Angelou wrote copiously about her own experiences.
Exploration 2: One of the themes of Kin is “shared memories and shared suffering.” How does this apply to a woman of many worlds and one?
1. Frederick Douglass wrote three autobiographies. Maybe it has to do with the horrific nature of racism. And maybe sexism inspired another three for Maya Angelou.
ReplyDelete2. This is a good question. I'll have to read some of her autobiographies to come up with an answer. When she reported sexual abuse as a child, the perpetrator was jailed for one day. He was later killed, probably by her uncles. She became mute for five years for fear her words could kill people. Caged bird indeed.