Happy Birthday Maya Angelou

[100K Poets Making A Difference]

                                Author Maya Angelou putting pen to paper. (photo courtesy of Lipstick Alley)

With all the high-profile respect Maya Angelou gets from people like Hillary Clinton and Oprah Winfrey you’d think she already won the Nobel Prize and a couple of Pulitzers. Although it’s not really like that, what she has won during her career as an author, poet, educator, and entertainer is the love and admiration of people all over the world.

Born on this day, April 4 in 1928, Angelou is one of those heavy-weight literary legends in a class with people like Joan Didion, Cormac McCarthy, Nikki Giovanni, and a very few others. Her memoirs, especially I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS, are probably studied more in colleges than her poetry but her poems get tweeted and Facebooked all over the place. Maybe what people like most about her is she’s a survivor who has lived through wars, apartheid, sexism, poverty, and all kinds of bullsh*t but managed in her golden years to come out on top. She’s just like the “Phenomenal Woman” she writes about in her poem and you can bet a lot of people are going to be tweeting that one for her birthday so I’m going to post the poem based on the book and movie of this title:

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

The free bird leaps
on the back of the win
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wings
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 fearful trill
of the things unknown
but longed for still
and is tune is heard
on the distant hill for the caged bird
sings of freedom

The free bird thinks of another breeze
an 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.

by Maya Angelou

post by 100k

[100K Poets Making A Difference]

She is so UP THERE!

[Passion of the Poets]

This is as classic a writer's pose as it gets. I can't say I'm a fan of ALL Ms. Angelou's poetry but certain works do stand out for me and her memoirs are true treasures of literature. A lioness who has well-earned her place of honor. 

[In Love With Music]

You were right 100k, a lot of people tweeted happy birthday links to PHENOMENAL WOMAN. She was due.

mlm

[Creative Conversation Interviews]

One of her greatest talents from what's been witnessed on many film clips, full videos and live streams is her ability to claim different kinds of people as social kin. In this one she celebrates Andrew Young as her "brother" on his 75th birthday and recites "And Still I Rise" in his honor.

[Author-Poet Aberjhani]

And yes, Thank You for remembering :-)

[Author-Poet Aberjhani]

Happy birthday to the great Maya Angelou indeed. She really is one of those whose life has evolved to the point of becoming a kind of living poem in itself.