Posted on 06/05/2014 1:11:44 PM PDT by pabianice
Maya Angelou, an author more revered than read, passed away at 86 on Wednesday. She is survived by her seven autobiographies...
“I’m not modest,” Angelou explained last year to the AP. “I have no modesty...” In this spirit, she insisted that others call her “Dr. Angelou” though she never obtained a college degree...
The doctor without a doctorate became a teacher without students at Wake Forest. “She collects an annual salary well into the six figures, yet presently teaches no classes and has no campus office,” John Meroney, then a senior at the North Carolina school, wrote in The American Spectator twenty-one years ago. “The office listed for her in the Wake Forest telephone directory is a storage closet in a building far from the main part of campus...”
Other writers experience the Maya Angelou phenomenon as less cause for amusement than anger. Upon her passing, eulogist Debbie Schlussel tweeted: “Maya Angelou, Racist, US-Hating, Anti-Semitic Nutjob, Most Overrated Crappy Writer, RIH.” It lacks the eloquence of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings...
Going from rags to riches by conquering the business world serves as one American Dream. A more common, albeit less realized version, involves enjoying a six-figure living from a no-show job.
Her mouth occasionally called the promise of America a big fat lie. Her life begged to differ.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Perhaps the most Magic of all Negroes.
The later explains the former.
Now I know how the caged bird got its groove back.
Her greatest performance wasn’t in the miniseries Roots or on the album Miss Calypso. It was playing the character Maya Angelou.There’s a P.T. Barnum quality to Maya Angelou. Convincing the world of your greatness requires a greatness. This is especially true of the mediocre.
Now I know what poetic license REALLY means!
Leni
I hated “I know why the caged bird sings”
But this is good poetry:
We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.
We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love’s light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.
The only measurable accomplishment in her too-long meaningless existence was to remove Ezra Pound as the worst published poet ever.
Poets and authors should never be judged for their incidental political views. Oscar Wilde was a monster, yet “the Portrait of Dorian Grey” is a vivisection on evil, particularly Wilde’s own. One might even say that the novel came true in reverse: the portrait is still hauntingly beautiful, yet the man died a grotesque beast.
Affirmative action and political correctness has made quite a joke of a certain ethnic group.
I think I saw her starring in a local production of Porky and Bess.
One thing that poetry is not is obscure, remote or inaccessible. If you only like limericks about Nantucket, that’s on you, not Angelou.
Just couldn't help yourself, could you?
she is not the voice in the Hall of Presidents at Disney. it was changed to morgan freeman.
God Himself?
"Fr Dunne recorded the baptism: As the voiture rolled through the dark streets that wintry night, the sad story of Oscar Wilde was in part repeated to me...."Robert Ross knelt by the bedside, assisting me as best he could while I administered conditional baptism, and afterwards answering the responses while I gave Extreme Unction to the prostrate man and recited the prayers for the dying. As the man was in a semi-comatose condition, I did not venture to administer the Holy Viaticum; still I must add that he could be roused and was roused from this state in my presence. When roused, he gave signs of being inwardly conscious...
"Indeed I was fully satisfied that he understood me when told that I was about to receive him into the Catholic Church and gave him the Last Sacraments... "And when I repeated close to his ear the Holy Names, the Acts of Contrition, Faith, Hope and Charity, with acts of humble resignation to the Will of God, he tried all through to say the words after me."
Wow! Fascinating... I was unaware! Thanks!
LOL! Totally without intent!
Spit coffee on the monitor funny. Somehow (maybe not so ironically) I think the author is probably a better poet than the topic of this piece.
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