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This is the **full deep explanation of *“Million Man March” by Maya Angelou***—not line-by-line, but the **core meaning, layers, psychology, history, and themes**.\n\n---\n\n# 📖 🔥 DEEP EXPLANATION OF *MILLION MAN MARCH*\n\n## 🧠 1. WHAT THE POEM IS *ACTUALLY* ABOUT\n\nAt its core, this poem is about:\n\n👉 **Black suffering across history + collective healing + unity + rebuilding identity**\n\nIt is NOT just a motivational speech. \nIt is:\n\n- A **historical memory**\n- A **psychological healing process**\n- A **call for responsibility**\n- A **reconstruction of Black identity**\n\n---\n\n# ⏳ 2. HISTORICAL PAIN (FOUNDATION OF THE POEM)\n\nThe poem begins by grounding itself in **centuries of suffering**:\n\n- Slavery \n- Racism \n- Violence \n- Dehumanization \n\n👉 The repeated idea:\n> “The night has been long… the wound has been deep…” fileciteturn3file0 \n\n### 🔍 What this means deeply:\n\n- **Night** → oppression, darkness, suffering \n- **Wound** → trauma (physical + psychological) \n- **Pit / walls** → being trapped in a system \n\n👉 This is not just history— \nIt’s **generational trauma**.\n\n---\n\n# 💀 3. THE TRAUMA IMAGE (VERY IMPORTANT)\n\nThe most disturbing part:\n\n👉 The woman being dragged by her braids fileciteturn3file0 \n\n### 🔍 Deep meaning:\n\n- Represents:\n - Slavery \n - Violence against Black women \n - Loss of dignity \n\nBut here’s the key:\n\n👉 The man is **watching but helpless**\n\n### 💥 This is CRITICAL:\n\n- Black men are shown as:\n - **Powerless**\n - Unable to protect their women \n\n👉 This creates:\n- **Shame**\n- **Broken masculinity**\n- **Psychological damage**\n\n---\n\n# 🧠 4. IDENTITY CRISIS OF BLACK MEN\n\nThe poem directly addresses Black men:\n\n👉 Society labels them as:\n- Violent \n- Criminal \n- Dangerous \n\nBut Angelou flips this:\n\n👉 She shows:\n- They were made powerless by oppression \n- Then blamed for that weakness \n\n➡️ This is called:\n**Systemic distortion of identity**\n\n---\n\n# 🔥 5. COLLECTIVE MEMORY (ANCESTORS)\n\nThe poem constantly refers to:\n\n👉 “voices of old spirit” / “ancestors” fileciteturn3file0 \n\n### 🔍 Meaning:\n\n- The past is **alive**\n- History is **not dead**\n- Ancestors are:\n - guiding \n - warning \n - reminding \n\n👉 Message:\nYou cannot move forward unless you **remember your past**\n\n---\n\n# ⚡ 6. TURNING POINT: FROM PAIN → POWER\n\nAfter showing suffering, the poem shifts:\n\n👉 From:\n- Victimhood \n\n👉 To:\n- Empowerment \n\n### 🔥 Key idea:\n\n👉 Suffering is not just pain \n👉 It becomes **strength**\n\nFrom your text:\n- “have sharpened our senses and toughened our will” fileciteturn3file0 \n\n👉 Meaning:\n- Pain created resilience \n- Oppression created strength \n\n---\n\n# 🤝 7. UNITY (MOST IMPORTANT THEME)\n\nThe poem is literally a **call for unity**:\n\n👉 “Come together” \n👉 “Clap hands” \n\n### 🔍 Why unity?\n\nBecause:\n\n👉 Division = weakness \n👉 Unity = survival \n\nAngelou is saying:\n\n- Stop ego \n- Stop pretending \n- Stop division \n\n👉 Build:\n- Love \n- Respect \n- Community \n\n---\n\n# 🏠 8. REBUILDING LIFE (VERY DEEP PART)\n\nThis part is underrated but VERY important:\n\n👉 She talks about bringing:\n- kindness into homes \n- care into nursery \n- gentleness into kitchen fileciteturn3file0 \n\n### 🔍 Meaning:\n\nThis is not political anymore.\n\n👉 It becomes **social + personal reconstruction**\n\nShe is saying:\n\n➡️ Revolution is not just protests \n➡️ It starts at HOME \n\n---\n\n# 🧠 9. PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALING\n\nThe poem is also about:\n\n👉 Healing trauma\n\nHow?\n\n- Accept past \n- Unite \n- Love each other \n- Rebuild identity \n\n👉 This is **collective therapy through poetry**\n\n---\n\n# ⚖️ 10. RESPONSIBILITY (CRITICAL IDEA)\n\nAngelou is not just blaming society.\n\n👉 She also challenges Black men:\n\n- Take responsibility \n- Be present \n- Be protectors \n- Be leaders \n\n👉 So this is NOT victim mentality.\n\nIt is:\n👉 **Empowerment + accountability**\n\n---\n\n# 🌍 11. WHY THIS POEM WAS READ AT MILLION MAN MARCH\n\nThe event (1995):\n\n- Gathering of Black men \n- Aim:\n - Responsibility \n - Unity \n - Self-improvement \n\n👉 The poem fits perfectly:\n\nIt becomes:\n👉 A **collective awakening speech**\n\n---\n\n# 🔥 12. FINAL MESSAGE (MOST IMPORTANT)\n\nThe poem ends with:\n\n👉 Hope \n👉 Strength \n👉 Rising again \n\n👉 “We are a going-on people” fileciteturn3file0 \n\n### 🔍 Meaning:\n\n- Despite everything:\n - slavery \n - violence \n - oppression \n\n👉 Black people **continue to survive and rise**\n\n---\n\n# 🎯 FINAL CORE INTERPRETATION\n\nThis poem is a powerful exploration of historical suffering, identity, and collective healing. Maya Angelou transforms centuries of racial oppression into a call for unity, responsibility, and renewal. By confronting trauma, acknowledging the failures imposed by systemic oppression, and invoking the wisdom of ancestors, she urges Black men to reclaim their dignity and rebuild their communities. The poem ultimately asserts that despite deep wounds and long-standing injustice, Black people possess an enduring strength that enables them to rise again through unity, love, and self-awareness.\n\n---\n\n# 🧠 ONE-LINE DEEP IDEA\n\n👉 **Pain created strength, but only unity can transform that strength into healing and progress.**\n\n---\n\nIf you want next level:\n- I can give you 🔥 **exam-ready essay (20/20 answer)**\n- or 🧠 **themes + quotes mapping**\n- or ⚖️ compare with **Still I Rise / Caged Bird**\n\nJust say 👍","role","assistant",{},"33c89f8e-87fd-4df9-af65-9f1cead6b029",{"_226":240,"_133":241,"_90":242},1777250250.682012,{"_222":45,"_223":238},{"_234":15,"_235":236,"_107":108,"_109":110,"_111":112,"_113":104,"_114":104,"_116":237},"is_visually_hidden_from_conversation","command","prompt","adef2d50-f617-4deb-8767-a08ec1b617e7",[239],"The file contents provided above are truncated/partial snippets. The complete content for these files IS accessible via querying.\n\nIf the user asks a question related to these files, and the provided snippets do not clearly answer it, you **MUST** use the `file_search` tool to search the full document contents before responding.\n\n## How to invoke the file_search tool\nIf the user's query isn't sufficiently answered by the provided snippets, parsed text, or images, you should invoke `file_search.msearch`.\nTo search the full content of the available files, you **must** send one message with recipient `to=file_search.msearch` in the analysis channel. Your message should be structured exactly as follows:\n```\n{\n 'queries': ['Example query 1', 'Example query 2'] // List of up to five queries to search for.\n}\n```\n\nCarefully balance the number of `file_search` calls and the quality of your response with the latency incurred by `file_search` calls.\n\nImportant guidelines for query formatting:\n- Your message must be a valid JSON object. Do not include any extraneous text, backticks, markdown formatting, or comments beyond what is shown.\n- The `queries` field must be a list of strings.\n- One of the queries **MUST** exactly match the user's original question, but stripped of any extraneous details, and with ambiguous references clearly resolved using context from the conversation. It **MUST** be a complete sentence.\n- Even if you suspect the user meant something else, one query **MUST** still be their original question.\n\n## How to handle results from file_search\nThe file search tool will respond with the relevant search results from the full files. After you receive these results:\n- Carefully evaluate each result to determine its relevance and quality.\n- Use the high-quality and relevant results to inform your answer to the user's question.\n- When possible, reuse information from prior file_search results and avoid repeating identical queries.\n\n## Tool usage instructions and ordering\nWhen the user asks a question, carefully consider whether the provided snippets sufficiently answer the query, whether you need to invoke `file_search.msearch`, or another available tool (such as `web`, if available) should be used instead.\n\nTool-ordering Guidelines:\n1. For queries related to uploaded files, if snippets are insufficient, strongly prefer invoking `file_search.msearch` over other tools.\n - Avoid using `web.run`, `python` analysis, or any other tools until you have either:\n - Confirmed with high confidence the answer is not in the files, or\n - Have high confidence `file_search_tool` queries are not sufficient to answer the query.\n2. Avoid usage of `web_search/web.run` for queries related to uploaded files\n - Carefully consider whether the user's query is better answered by web search results rather than available snippets or results from `file_search_tool`.\n - Unless the user's query is clearly unrelated to the uploaded files, prefer using `file_search.msearch`. You can always follow up with a web search if necessary for a more complete response.\n3. Avoid using `python` unless necessary or requested by user.\n - If the user's query is answerable from the parsed text and images from the uploaded files, or from `file_search_tool`, do not invoke `python`.\n\nAlways keep this instruction in mind for the rest of the conversation, as the user may reference these files or ask related questions later on.","tool","file_search",{},{"_226":240,"_133":241,"_90":250},1777250250.6817598,{"_222":45,"_223":248},{"_234":15,"_107":108,"_109":110,"_111":112,"_113":104,"_114":104,"_116":247},"c3050fea-e1ba-4c97-99f3-ddb91471e546",[249],"\nRemember you have access to rendered images of pages from the files, in addition to their parsed text content. Some files may include images, while others may not.\nThese may contain embedded text in images, infographics, complex tables, diagrams, and other visual elements not fully captured in the parsed text.\nYou can directly view these images to read text within images, interpret infographics, understand diagrams and complex tables. When applicable, combine insights from both parsed text and images to provide comprehensive and enriched answers.\n\nWhen responding to the user, actively incorporate information from embedded text, images, tables, diagrams, and other visuals in the files when applicable.\nExplicitly reference them by mentioning their location (e.g., page number) and summarizing their content. For example:\n- \"According to the *chart on page 5*, sales have increased by 20% over ...\"\n- \"The *diagram on page 3* illustrates the workflow, highlighting ...\"\n",{},{"_226":240,"_133":241,"_90":261},1777250250.6815069,{"_222":257,"_223":258},{"_235":255,"_234":15,"_256":151,"_197":89,"_107":108,"_109":110,"_111":112,"_113":104,"_114":104,"_116":153},"context_stuff","retrieval_turn_number","multimodal_text",[259,260],"Make sure to include fileciteturn3file1 in your response to cite this file, or to surface it as a link.","\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPowerPoint Presentation\n\nMaya Angelou (1928-2014)\nMillion Man March\n\n\n\nMaya Angelou (Marguerite Anne Johnson)\n\nA poet, historian, author, actress, playwright, civil-rights activist, producer, dancer, and director\nUsed various forms of writing and art as means of self-expression, rebellion and social critique\nGrew up with her grandmother in Arkansas during the troubled marriage and divorce of her parents\nAt the age of 7, Angelou was raped by the partner of her mother. The man was jailed, released, and later murdered by Angelou’s uncle. \nBelieving her confession of her experience led to the man’s death, Angelou remained mute for six years. \nIn 1950, African black writers in New York City formed the Harlem Writers Guild to support the publication of Black authors. Angelou joined the Guild in 1959. \nAs a civil rights activist, Angelou worked for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.\n\n\n\n2\n\nMaya Angelou\nReynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina\nHer Autobiographical texts inspire oppressed and marginalized masses across the world\nI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first of Angelou’s multi-volume autobiographies.\nKeenly aware of the intersectionality of subjugation and discrimination – the black woman as marginalized by her race, class, and gender\nIn 2000, Angelou was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Bill Clinton.\nIn 2010, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the U.S., by President Barack Obama.\n Angelou was awarded over 50 honorary degrees before her death.\n\n\n\n\nMaya Angelou\nThe Importance of discovering one’s voice and using it loud and clear…\nResisting one’s silence (fear and shame) \nResisting the misinterpretation and falsification by others\nYou may write me down in history\nWith your bitter, twisted lies,\nYou may trod me in the very dirt\nBut still, like dust, I’ll rise.\n—from “Still I Rise”\n\n\n\n\nThe Power of the ‘Autobiographical’\nCatharsis (The calm of mind/ all passions spent)\nLiberatory potential of telling one’s story\nHistorical-Personal Document preserved for posterity\nThe Site of Empowerment – Overcoming Silence and Speaking Out\nSpeaking out is an intimidating prospect – Subjecting oneself to the censure and judgment of others\nTelling one’s truth courageously to an insensitive or ignorant audience\nCompanionship of people going through similar troubles and tribulations\nInspiration for generations to come\n\n\n\n\nMillion Man March (16 October, 1995)\nMaya Angelou Reciting the Poem (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3IIX8_cm7I_\n\n\n\nThank You\n\n\n\n\n",{},{"_226":240,"_133":241,"_90":369},1777250250.6758559,{"_222":257,"_223":267},{"_235":255,"_234":15,"_256":151,"_197":31,"_107":108,"_109":110,"_111":112,"_113":104,"_114":104,"_116":266},"9ef649cc-2d41-477a-ad0b-0ac4a5debcb6",[268,269,270,271,272,273,274,275,276,277,278,279,280,281,282,283,284,285,286,287,288,289,290,291,292,293,294,295,296,297,298,299,300,301,302,303,304,305,306,307,308,309,310,311,312,313,314,315,316,317,318,319,320,321,322,323,324,325,326,327,328,329,330,331,332,333,334,335,336],"Make sure to include fileciteturn3file0 in your response to cite this file, or to surface it as a link.","","Million Man March \r\nBy Maya Angelou \r\nBackground: The Million Man March took place in Washington, D.C. on October 16, 1995. It was a \r\npolitical demonstration that brought together hundreds of thousands of African American men from \r\nacross the United States. Maya Angelou presented her poem, ‘Million Man March’ on the occasion. \r\nAngelou uses this event as a symbol of collective empowerment and the search for unity. The \"Million \r\nMan March Poem\" by Maya Angelou addresses the historical trauma and oppression faced by Black \r\nAmericans. It echoes the sentiments expressed in her other works, such as \"I Know Why the Caged \r\nBird Sings,\" which explore themes of race, identity, and resilience. Through her writing, Angelou raises \r\nher voice against systemic violence and celebrates the courageous suffering of her race. She also alludes \r\nto the collective memory of slavery and the slave trade that uprooted the blacks from their ancestral \r\nlands. The poem reminds the listeners about endless and unearned suffering of black people through \r\ncenturies. There is also an implicit hope about the rewards and redemptive power of unearned suffering. \r\nThe poem's repetitive structure emphasizes the enduring nature of the struggles of black people through \r\ncenturies of slavery, dehumanization, and racial discrimination. The poem alternates between verses \r\nthat acknowledge the long and painful journey of Black Americans and verses that evoke hope and \r\nresilience. The poem also confronts the devaluation of Black lives, particularly through the image of \r\nthe speaker being dragged by her braids. The glimpse of her male counterpart watching this tragedy \r\nintensifies the trauma of such a shared cultural memory. When black men thus become helpless \r\nwitnesses to the suffering of women, they fail to live up to the burden of expectation as ‘Men’– The \r\nexpectation that they should be providers and protectors. Maya Angelou challenges the stereotypes and \r\nprejudices that are used to humiliate black men in general and points out how systemic violence and \r\ndeliberate attempts to demonize them play a strategic role in defining their ‘image’. \r\nUltimately, the poem calls for a collective effort to overcome adversity and achieve healing and \r\nreconciliation. It emphasizes the importance of recognizing the common humanity and shared struggles \r\nof all Black Americans and working together to create a more just and equitable society. \r\nThemes of the poem \r\n• Unity\r\nThe poem encourages Black Americans to come together and support each other – be \r\nunited by shared cultural memory and experience of suffering. \r\n• Empowerment\r\nThe poem calls for Black Americans to improve themselves and fight for their rights, \r\nhence acts as a voice of collective dissent. \r\n• Respect and fairness\r\nThe poem reminds that historically marginalized Black Americans are worthy of justice, \r\nfairness and respect \r\n• Challenging the stereotypes about black men\r\nThe poem challenges the prejudiced view about the violent and brutal black man \r\n• Responsibility\r\nThe poem encourages Black Americans to take responsibility for their families and communities. \r\nThe poem uses the image of the speaker being dragged by her braids to confront the devaluation of \r\nBlack lives. The poem's final lines, \"The ancestors remind us, despite the history of pain we are a goingon people who will rise again\" convey a sense of hope and resilience. ","","Million Man March\r\nThe night has been long, \r\nThe wound has been deep, \r\nThe pit has been dark, \r\nAnd the walls have been steep. \r\nUnder a dead blue sky on a distant beach, \r\nI was dragged by my braids just beyond your reach. \r\nYour hands were tied, your mouth was bound, \r\nYou couldn't even call out my name. \r\nYou were helpless and so was I, \r\nBut unfortunately throughout history \r\nYou've worn a badge of shame. \r\nI say, the night has been long, \r\nThe wound has been deep, \r\nThe pit has been dark \r\nAnd the walls have been steep. \r\nBut today, voices of old spirit sound \r\nSpeak to us in words profound, \r\nAcross the years, across the centuries, \r\nAcross the oceans, and across the seas. \r\nThey say, draw near to one another, \r\nSave your race. \r\nYou have been paid for in a distant place, \r\nThe old ones remind us that slavery's chains \r\nHave paid for our freedom again and again. \r\nThe night has been long, \r\nThe pit has been deep, ","","The night has been dark, \r\nAnd the walls have been steep. \r\nThe hells we have lived through and live through still, \r\nHave sharpened our senses and toughened our will. \r\nThe night has been long. \r\nThis morning I look through your anguish \r\nRight down to your soul. \r\nI know that with each other we can make ourselves whole. \r\nI look through the posture and past your disguise, \r\nAnd see your love for family in your big brown eyes. \r\nI say, clap hands and let's come together in this meeting ground, \r\nI say, clap hands and let's deal with each other with love, \r\nI say, clap hands and let us get from the low road of indifference, \r\nClap hands, let us come together and reveal our hearts, \r\nLet us come together and revise our spirits, \r\nLet us come together and cleanse our souls, \r\nClap hands, let's leave the preening \r\nAnd stop impostering our own history. \r\nClap hands, call the spirits back from the ledge, \r\nClap hands, let us invite joy into our conversation, \r\nCourtesy into our bedrooms, \r\nGentleness into our kitchen, \r\nCare into our nursery. \r\nThe ancestors remind us, despite the history of pain \r\nWe are a going-on people who will rise again. \r\nAnd still we rise. ","","Maya Angelou (1 9 28 -2 0 14 ) \r\nBy Dr. Kelly A. Spring \r\nPoet, dancer, singer, activist, and scholar Maya Angelou was a world-famous author. She was \r\nbest known for her unique and pioneering autobiographical writing style. \r\nOn April 4, 1928, Marguerite Ann Johnson, known to the world as Maya Angelou, was born \r\nin St. Louis, Missouri. Due to her parents’ tumultuous marriage and subsequent divorce, \r\nAngelou went to live with her paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas at an early age. Her \r\nolder brother, Bailey, gave Angelou her nickname “Maya.”\r\nReturning to her mother’s care briefly at the age of seven, Angelou was raped by her mother’s \r\nboyfriend. He was later jailed and then killed when released from jail. Believing that her \r\nconfession of the trauma had a hand in the man’s death, Angelou became mute for six years. \r\nDuring her mutism and into her teens, she again lived with her grandmother in Arkansas. \r\nAngelou’s interest in the written word and the English language was evident from an early age. \r\nThroughout her childhood, she wrote essays, and poetry, and kept a journal. When she returned \r\nto Arkansas, she took an interest in poetry and memorized works by Shakespeare and Poe. \r\nBefore the start of World War II, Angelou moved back in with her mother, who was living in \r\nOakland, California. She attended George Washington High School and took dance and drama \r\ncourses at the California Labor School. \r\nWhen war broke out, Angelou applied to join the Women’s Army Corps. However, her \r\napplication was rejected because of her involvement in the California Labor School, which was \r\nsaid to have Communist ties. Determined to gain employment, despite being only 15 years old, \r\nshe decided to apply for the position of streetcar conductor. Many men had left their jobs to \r\njoin the services, enabling women to fill them. However, Angelou was barred from applying \r\nat first because of her race. But she was undeterred. Every day for three weeks, she requested \r\na job application but was denied. Finally, the company relented and handed her an application. \r\nBecause she was under the legal working age, she wrote that she was 19. She was accepted for \r\nthe position and became the first African American woman to work as a streetcar conductor in \r\nSan Francisco. Angelou was employed for a semester but then decided to return to school. She \r\ngraduated from Mission High School in the summer of 1944 and soon after gave birth to her \r\nonly child, Clyde Bailey (Guy) Johnson. \r\nAfter graduation, Angelou undertook a series of odd jobs to support herself and her son. In \r\n1949, she married Tosh Angelos, an electrician in the US Navy. She adopted a form of his \r\nsurname and kept it throughout her life, though the marriage ended in divorce in 1952. \r\nAngelou was also noted for her talents as a singer and dancer, particularly in the calypso and \r\ncabaret styles. In the 1950s, she performed professionally in the US, Europe, and northern \r\nAfrica, and sold albums of her recordings. \r\nIn 1950, African American writers in New York City formed the Harlem Writers Guild to \r\nnurture and support the publication of Black authors. Angelou joined the Guild in 1959. She \r\nalso became active in the Civil Rights Movement and served as the northern coordinator of the \r\nSouthern Christian Leadership Conference, a prominent African American advocacy \r\norganization. \r\nIn 1969, Angelou published I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, an autobiography of her early \r\nlife. Her tale of personal strength amid childhood trauma and racism resonated with readers ","","and was nominated for the National Book Award. Many schools sought to ban the book for its \r\nfrank depiction of sexual abuse, but it is credited with helping other abuse survivors tell their \r\nstories. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings has been translated into numerous languages and \r\nhas sold over a million copies worldwide. Angelou eventually published six more \r\nautobiographies, culminating in 2013’s Mom & Me & Mom. \r\nShe wrote numerous poetry volumes, such as the Pulitzer Prize-nominated Just Give Me a \r\nDrink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971), as well as several essay collections. She also recorded \r\nspoken albums of her poetry, including “On the Pulse of the Morning,” for which she won a \r\nGrammy for Best Spoken Word Album. The poem was originally written for and delivered at \r\nPresident Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993. She also won a Grammy in 1995, and again in \r\n2002, for her spoken albums of poetry. \r\nAngelou carried out a wide variety of activities on stage and screen as a writer, actor, director, \r\nand producer. In 1972, she became the first African American woman to have her screenplay \r\nturned into a film with the production of Georgia, Georgia. Angelou earned a Tony nomination \r\nin 1973 for her supporting role in Jerome Kitty’s play Look Away, and portrayed Kunta Kinte’s \r\ngrandmother in the television miniseries Roots in 1977. \r\nShe was recognized by many organizations both nationally and internationally for her \r\ncontributions to literature. In 1981, Wake Forest University offered Angelou the Reynolds \r\nProfessorship of American Studies. President Clinton awarded Angelou the National Medal of \r\nArts in 2000. In 2012, she was a member of the inaugural class inducted into the Wake Forest \r\nUniversity Writers Hall of Fame. The following year, she received the National Book \r\nFoundation’s Literarian Award for outstanding service to the American literary community. \r\nAngelou also gave many commencement speeches and was awarded more than 30 honorary \r\ndegrees in her lifetime. \r\nAngelou died on May 28, 2014. Several memorials were held in her honor, including ones at \r\nWake Forest University and Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco. To honor her legacy, \r\nthe US Postal Service issued a stamp with her likeness on it in 2015. (The US Postal Service \r\nmistakenly included a quote on the stamp that has long been associated with Angelou but was \r\nactually first written by Joan Walsh Anglund.) \r\nIn 2010, President Barack Obama awarded Angelou the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the \r\ncountry’s highest civilian honor. It was a fitting recognition of Angelou’s remarkable and \r\ninspiring career in the arts. ","","Other Important Poems by Maya Angelou \r\nStill I Rise \r\nYou may write me down in history \r\nWith your bitter, twisted lies, \r\nYou may trod me in the very dirt \r\nBut still, like dust, I'll rise. \r\nDoes my sassiness upset you? \r\nWhy are you beset with gloom? \r\n’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells \r\nPumping in my living room. \r\nJust like moons and like suns, \r\nWith the certainty of tides, \r\nJust like hopes springing high, \r\nStill I'll rise. \r\nDid you want to see me broken? \r\nBowed head and lowered eyes? \r\nShoulders falling down like teardrops, \r\nWeakened by my soulful cries? \r\nDoes my haughtiness offend you? \r\nDon't you take it awful hard \r\n’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines \r\nDiggin’ in my own backyard. \r\nYou may shoot me with your words, \r\nYou may cut me with your eyes, \r\nYou may kill me with your hatefulness, \r\nBut still, like air, I’ll rise. \r\nDoes my sexiness upset you? \r\nDoes it come as a surprise \r\nThat I dance like I've got diamonds \r\nAt the meeting of my thighs? \r\nOut of the huts of history’s shame \r\nI rise \r\nUp from a past that’s rooted in pain \r\nI rise \r\nI'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, \r\nWelling and swelling I bear in the tide. \r\nLeaving behind nights of terror and fear \r\nI rise \r\nInto a daybreak that’s wondrously clear \r\nI rise ","","Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, \r\nI am the dream and the hope of the slave. \r\nI rise \r\nI rise \r\nI rise. \r\nCopyright Credit: Maya Angelou, \"Still I Rise\" from And Still I Rise: A Book of \r\nPoems. Copyright © 1978 by Maya Angelou. Used by permission of Random House, an \r\nimprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. \r\nSource: The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (1994) \r\nCaged Bird \r\nA free bird leaps \r\non the back of the wind \r\nand floats downstream \r\ntill the current ends \r\nand dips his wing \r\nin the orange sun rays \r\nand dares to claim the sky. \r\nBut a bird that stalks \r\ndown his narrow cage \r\ncan seldom see through \r\nhis bars of rage \r\nhis wings are clipped and \r\nhis feet are tied \r\nso he opens his throat to sing. \r\nThe caged bird sings \r\nwith a fearful trill \r\nof things unknown \r\nbut longed for still \r\nand his tune is heard \r\non the distant hill \r\nfor the caged bird \r\nsings of freedom. \r\nThe free bird thinks of another breeze \r\nand the trade winds soft through the sighing trees \r\nand the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn \r\nand he names the sky his own. \r\nBut a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams \r\nhis shadow shouts on a nightmare scream \r\nhis wings are clipped and his feet are tied \r\nso he opens his throat to sing. \r\nThe caged bird sings \r\nwith a fearful trill ","","of things unknown \r\nbut longed for still \r\nand his tune is heard \r\non the distant hill \r\nfor the caged bird \r\nsings of freedom. \r\nUseful Links \r\n1. Maya Angelou responds to questions about her process \r\nhttps://www.oprah.com/spirit/how-to-write-a-poem-maya-angelous-advice/all ","","\"When Great Trees Fall\": The Poetry of Maya Angelou \r\nAuthor(s): Mary Jane Lupton \r\nSource: CLA Journal , SEPTEMBER/DECEMBER 2014, Vol. 58, No. 1/2, SPECIAL ISSUE: \r\nThe Legacies of Maya Angelou (SEPTEMBER/DECEMBER 2014), pp. 77-90 \r\nPublished by: College Language Association \r\nStable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44326221\r\nJSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide \r\nrange of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and \r\nfacilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. \r\nYour use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at \r\nhttps://about.jstor.org/terms\r\nis collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to CLA Journal\r\nThis content downloaded from \r\n202.131.110.60 on Mon, 03 Mar 2025 04:43:30 UTC \r\nAll use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms",""," \"When Great Trees Fall\": The Pòetry of Maya Angelou\r\n Mary Jane Lupton\r\n As Annie a child Johnson growing in up St. in Louis, Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri in 1928) developed an early love Stamps, Missouri Arkansas, in Maya 1928) Angelou developed (born an Marguerite early love\r\n for the music of African American poetry and for the rhythms of the Negro\r\n spiritual.1 She loved to recite the poems of James Weldon Johnson, Paul Laurence\r\n Dunbar, and Langston Hughes for her paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson.\r\n These recitations were in a small sense preparations for what I consider to be her\r\n greatest poetic achievement: the composition and performance of \"On the Pulse\r\n of Morning,\" written for the Inauguration of President William Clinton in 1993.\r\n During her childhood she memorized the works of white poets as well-\r\n -Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Matthew Arnold -\r\n although her grandmother forbade her to recite them. In a spirited public\r\n interview at the Young Men's Hebrew Association in Manhattan in 1990, Angelou\r\n confessed to George Plimpton that she and her brother Bailey did not dare to\r\n perform a scene from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice , despite having assured\r\n Mama Henderson that the author, although indeed white, had been dead for\r\n centuries. Her grandmother answered, \"'No Ma'am, little mistress you will not.'\r\n So I rendered James Weldon Johnson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Countee Cullen,\r\n Langston Hughes.\"2\r\n Allusions to works by black poets and to the black musical tradition - the\r\n blues, spirituals, gospel - appear in her poems and were incorporated into the titles\r\n of five of her six autobiographies. Her noted image, the \"caged bird,'\" dominates\r\n the title of her first and most famous autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird\r\n Sings (1970) and is the title of the poem \"Caged Bird,\" published in the volume\r\n Shaker, Why Don't You Sing in 1983 (CP 194). 3\r\n The image of the trapped bird originated in Paul Laurence Dunbar's 1896\r\n \"Sympathy,\" a poem whose third stanza begins and ends with \"I know why the\r\n 1 Mary Jane Lupton, Maya Angelou: A Critical Companion , First Edition (Westport CT: Greenwood\r\n Press, 1998) 47, 53.\r\n 2 Plimpton, \"The Art of Fiction 1 19: Maya Angelou,\" Paris Review 32: 1 19 (1990) 145-67:\r\n 3 \"Maya Angelou, \"Caged Bird,\" The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (New York:\r\n Random House, 1994) 194. Unless otherwise indicated, references to the poetry are to the 1994\r\n edition, abbreviated CP and appearing parenthetically in the text.\r\n CLA JOURNAL 77\r\nThis content downloaded from \r\n202.131.110.60 on Mon, 03 Mar 2025 04:43:30 UTC \r\nAll use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms","",{"_222":337,"_338":367,"_340":368,"_342":343,"_344":343,"_345":346,"_90":-5},""," Mary Jane Lupton\r\n caged bird sings.\"4 In Angelou's \"Caged Bird\" one finds a similar use of repetition\r\n and an intense longing to be free; in both poems the caged bird is a symbol for the\r\n enchained slave and for his/her constrained descendants. However, in \"Caged Bird\"\r\n Angelou does not repeat Dunbar's \"I know why\" refrain. Nor does she present as\r\n brutal or emotional a portrait of the creature's pain or scars as Dunbar does in\r\n \"Sympathy;\" his battered bird beats \"his wing / Till its blood is red on the cruel\r\n bars.\"\r\n In The Heart of a Womany her fourth autobiography (1981), Angelou again take\r\n her title directly from African American poetry, adopting it from Georgia Douglas\r\n Johnson's first published volume (1918).5 Johnson's title poem is an eight-line\r\n lyric in which she contrasts Dunbar's caged bird to \"the heart of a woman\" flying\r\n away at dawn but returning to her cage at night. The heavily anapestic rhythms\r\n of Johnson's \"Heart of a Woman\" have an up-beat that tends to capture Angelou's\r\n mood in the fourth autobiography; by the end of the book she has escaped the\r\n entrapments of her troubled relationship with a charismatic African freedom-\r\n fighter, Vus Make. Thus both Angelou and Johnson specifically address the issue of\r\n gender, as Dunbar does not.\r\n In the fifth autobiography, All Goďs Children Have Traveling Shoes (1986),\r\n Angelou returns for her title to the rhythms of the black musical tradition. The\r\n \"traveling shoes\" refer to the Negro spiritual, \"I've Got Shoes,\" from which she sang\r\n a few lines during our 1997 interview, conducted on June 16, 1997, at her home\r\n in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. During the interview Angelou did not always\r\n distinguish among genres: \"If they are songs about the spirit, then they are gospel\r\n songs. Some they call gospel and some spirituals. But those are just titles which help\r\n people to codify the Dewey Decimal System or something. The people who wrote\r\n them and sang them, they thought they were all spirituals.\"6 In a similar tone I\r\n would suggest that spirituals, which usually rhyme and use the device of repetition\r\n for their structure, can be called spirit/poems or people/poems or Heaven/poems.\r\n In the sixth volume, A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002), the word song, which\r\n appears in the up-lifting religious title, repeats the \"sings\" and \" singin of earlier\r\n books in the series. It seems clear that poetry and song were inextricably connected\r\n in her mind with the autobiographies, to the point that she would first publish in\r\n one form and then immediately in the other. In the 1997 interview, her answers to\r\n the questions I asked about the art of autobiography were constantly disrupted by\r\n spontaneous responses, often interspersed with song.\r\n 4 Paul Laurence Dunbar, \"Sympathy,\" The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, eds.\r\n Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997) 900.\r\n 5 Georgia Douglas Johnson, The Norton Anthology of African American Literature , 97 1 .\r\n 6 Angelou, cited by Lupton, pp. 47-48.\r\n 78 CLA JOURNAL\r\nThis content downloaded from \r\n202.131.110.60 on Mon, 03 Mar 2025 04:43:30 UTC \r\nAll use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms","",{"_222":337,"_338":365,"_340":366,"_342":343,"_344":343,"_345":346,"_90":-5},""," \"When Great Trees Fall\": The Poetry of Maya Angelou\r\n Angelou reportedly wrote her first poem, when she was fifteen.7 She was still\r\n writing commemorative poetry until the year before her death. Maya Angelou\r\n published more than four individual volumes of poetry, two collections, and a\r\n number of separately published ceremonial poems following her maiden venture\r\n with Random House in 1971. Yet literary critics and editors of specialized\r\n anthologies have paid her poetry scant attention.8 To my knowledge only one\r\n critic, Lyman B. Hägen, has adequately dealt with Angelou's poetry. In \"Chapter\r\n 4: Poetry about Everything,\" Hägen gives a balanced account of Angelou's poems,\r\n which \"go from the excitement of love to outrage over racial injustice, from the\r\n pride of blackness and African heritage to suffered slurs.\"9 He discusses her line\r\n length (usually short), her sensitive rendering of rhythm and of emotion, and\r\n establishes her roots in the black oral tradition. In language as succinct as Angelou's,\r\n he summarizes her technique: \"Angelou's poems are dramatic and lyrical. Her\r\n style is open, direct, unambiguous, and conversational. The diction is plain but\r\n sometimes the metaphors are quite striking.\"10\r\n Of the topics treated in her poetry, I have found the most consistent to be love\r\n fulfilled or unfulfilled; black men and black women, together or separate; memory;\r\n drugs; religion; and slavery. Often these inter-related themes are held together by\r\n references to song , as in \"Worker's Song\" (CP 223); or in \"The Singer Will Not Sing\"\r\n (CP 149); or in \"A Georgia Song\" (CP 187-88). She once told Oprah Winfrey that\r\n \"all poetry was music written for the human voice.\"11 Like the Protestant hymn and\r\n like the blues, Angelou's poem/songs often introduce a major clause that is repeated\r\n throughout the subsequent stanzas in a refrain. This mnemonic technique enables\r\n the congregation to sing a standard hymn without knowing all of the words, and it\r\n helps the blues singer through her or his many interlocked choruses. LeRoi Jones\r\n (Amiri Baraka) discusses blues as a \"verse form\" having social meaning: \"Love, sex,\r\n tragedy in interpersonal relationships, death, travel, loneliness, etc., all are social\r\n phenomena.\" 12\r\n 7 Lyman B.Hagen, Heart of a Woman , Mind of a Writer, and Soul of a Poet: A Critical Analysis of the\r\n Writings of Maya Angelou (Lanham MD: U P of America, 1997) 19. The reference will hereafter be\r\n abbreviated as Heart.\r\n 8 The Norton Anthology of African American Literature includes only two poems by Maya Angelou,\r\n \"Still I Rise'* and \"My Arkansas.\" The Prentice Hall Anthology of African American Literature\r\n contains none of Angelou's poetry. The Prentice Hall Anthology of African American Women\r\n Writers contains only one poem by Maya Angelou, \"Still I Rise.\"\r\n 9 Hägen, Heart, 119.\r\n 10 Ibid., 130.\r\n 11 Hallelujah! The Welcome Table (New York: Random House, 2004), 202.\r\n 12 Blues People , 50.\r\n CLA JOURNAL 79\r\nThis content downloaded from \r\n202.131.110.60 on Mon, 03 Mar 2025 04:43:30 UTC \r\nAll use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms","",{"_222":337,"_338":363,"_340":364,"_342":343,"_344":343,"_345":346,"_90":-5},""," Mary Jane Lupton\r\n Although Angelou utilizes blues themes throughout her Collected Poems , she\r\n does not use the specific twelve-bar blues structure of three rhyming lines (AAA).\r\n However, she approximates this form in a delightful early poem \"No Loser, No\r\n Weeper\" (CP 12) by concluding the standard AAA rhyme scheme with a fourth\r\n unrhymed line that varies slightly in each stanza.13 The poem lists in the first three\r\n stanzas three examples of losing something - a dime, a doll, and a watch - and\r\n ends with a fourth stanza:\r\n Now if I felt that way ťbout a watch and a toy,\r\n What you think I feel 'bout my lover-boy?\r\n I ain't threatening you, madam, but he is my evening's joy.\r\n And I mean I really hate to lose something.\r\n As early as 1971 Angelou was experimenting not only with African American\r\n musical and speech patterns but also with the invention of a persona through\r\n whom she could express basic feelings. The \"I\" of \"No Loser, No Weeper\" is not\r\n Angelou but a jealous woman who is meticulously quoted throughout as she\r\n addresses a rival. Similarly, her famous \"phenomenal woman\" is not necessarily\r\n the poet but a universal woman whose emotions are displays of overwhelming\r\n pride and not, as in this early poem, of potential loss. At their most effective- for\r\n example in \"Phenomenal Woman\" (CP 130-31) and in \"Still I Rise\" (CP163-64),\r\n the techniques of repeated phrasing and conscious narration give the poems their\r\n framework, strength, immediacy, and voice.\r\n \"Phenomenal Woman\" is one of Angelous most endearing poems. The persona\r\n is a large, hip-swinging, unbowed female of unspecified race. Structurally, the poem\r\n consists of four stanzas ranging from thirteen to sixteen lines, with each stanza\r\n divided by the words \"I say,\" followed by a litany of female attributes: flashing eyes,\r\n riding breasts, arching back, clicking heels, and so forth. The words and images\r\n pile one upon another, bringing to mind the frenzied Male Poet's response to the\r\n song of the \"Abyssinian maid,\" the Ethiopian singer in Coleridge's \"Kubla Khan\":\r\n \"And all who heard should see them there, / And all should cry, Beware! Beware! /\r\n His flashing eyes, his floating hair.\"14 Like Coleridge's Abyssinian maid, Angelou's\r\n \"Phenomenal Woman\" works her magic when we overhear her voice, hear the\r\n poem in the \"mind's ear,\" as if listening to a boisterous recitation. Angelou had in\r\n fact recited and recorded \"Phenomenal Woman\" so often that critics assume her\r\n to be the subject, the \"I\" of the poem. I would argue on the contrary that as in her\r\n 13 According to Jones, the twelve- bar blues is structured so that \"each verse is of three lines, each\r\n line about four bars long,\" ibid, 68.\r\n 14 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, \"Kubla Khan,\" Samuel Taylor Coleridge- The Major Works. Revised\r\n Ed. (New York: Oxford U P, 2008), 102-03/\r\n 80 CLA JOURNAL\r\nThis content downloaded from \r\n202.131.110.60 on Mon, 03 Mar 2025 04:43:30 UTC \r\nAll use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms","",{"_222":337,"_338":361,"_340":362,"_342":343,"_344":343,"_345":346,"_90":-5},""," \"When Great Trees Fall\": The Poetry of Maya Angelou\r\n childhood recitals for Mama Henderson and-in her televised public poems, these\r\n lyrics are aspects of her amazing oratory.\r\n In \"Still I Rise\" the first seven stanzas are written in ballad form (ABCB,\r\n alternating iambic tetrameter/trimeter) with many anapestic and spondaic\r\n substitutions. These variations give the poem a taunting or \"sassy\" effect as she\r\n addresses a \"You\" who one assumes to be white. The poem changes its rhythm\r\n in the eighth and ninth stanzas, becoming a series of couplets punctuated by the\r\n words \"I rise\" - a two-word, two-syllable line that is repeated three times at the end\r\n of the ninth and final stanza. Clearly, Angelou had a genuine concern for poetic\r\n patterns, although too many readers might see only the anger as the narrator rises\r\n above adversity.\r\n The images reveal that the persona is black (\"I'm a black ocean\") and female,\r\n as in the vulvic stanza:\r\n Does my sexiness upset you?\r\n Does it come as a surprise\r\n That I dance like I've got diamonds\r\n At the meeting of my thighs?\r\n The word rise appears ten times in the poem and is a frequent rhyme word, as\r\n in the stanza above. The accumulation of rising sounds creates an upward cadence,\r\n a kind of secular resurrection.\r\n Like the moon, like the tides, like the air, like the slave, so the narrator rises\r\n outside of a painful past: \"Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear / 1 rise\" (CP\r\n 164).\r\n Both in her poetry and in her prose Angelou seemed captivated by the notion of\r\n rising, reflected in the title of her sixth autobiography, A Song Flung Up to Heaven .\r\n On the final page of that final autobiography, rise becomes the major verb and\r\n Hamletthe major allusion: \"I thought that if I wrote a book, I would have to examine\r\n the quality in the human spirit that continues to rise despite the slings and arrows\r\n of outrageous fortune.\" The reference to Hamlet looks backwards to the childhood\r\n that she is getting ready to recreate as she embarks on her autobiographical series.\r\n \"Rise\" appears three more times on this final page. While Maya Angelou makes her\r\n own individual use of the concept of rising, she is also echoing the New Testament\r\n (\"But now is Christ risen from the dead\"); the Baptist Standard Hymnal (\"Christ\r\n Arose\"); and the Negro spiritual (\"Climin Jacob's Ladda\"). 15\r\n 15 These references to rising are to 1 Corinthians 15:20; to The Standard Baptist Hymnal , ed. Mrs.\r\n A. M. Townsend (Nashville, TN: Townsend Press, 1973) 108; and to LeRoi Jones, Blues People 47.\r\n See also rise in James Strong, The Strongest Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (Grand\r\n Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), 290.\r\n CLA JOURNAL 81\r\nThis content downloaded from \r\n202.131.110.60 on Mon, 03 Mar 2025 04:43:30 UTC \r\nAll use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms","",{"_222":337,"_338":359,"_340":360,"_342":343,"_344":343,"_345":346,"_90":-5},""," Mary Jane Lupton\r\n At times Angelou combines the black oral tradition with the lyric form\r\n popularized by British poet Robert Browning in the nineteenth century: the dramatic\r\n monologue. In a dramatic monologue a narrator, someone not the poet, speaks\r\n aloud to an intended listener in order to convey \"the speaker's temperament and\r\n character.\"16 As she had briefly assumed the voice of her forbidding grandmother\r\n in the Plimpton interview, so Angelou assumes the voices of various speakers in her\r\n poetry: the slave, the junkie, the prostitute, the \"phenomenal woman.\" She speaks\r\n through their words and in their language and in their spirit- much as Browning\r\n had articulated the voices and characters of Fra Lippo Lippi or Andrea del Sarto.\r\n In one of her most effective dramatic monologues, \"Why Are They Happy\r\n People ?\" (CP 237), a narrator, most assuredly white and more than likely an\r\n overseer, gives orders to three people - an old black man, a black boy, and a black\r\n girl - in three short, separate stanzas:\r\n Skin back your teeth, damn you,\r\n wiggle your ears,\r\n laugh while the years\r\n race\r\n down your face.\r\n Pull up your cheeks, black boy,\r\n wrinkle your nose,\r\n grin as your toes\r\n spade\r\n up your grave.\r\n Roll those big eyes, black gal,\r\n rubber your knees,\r\n smile when the trees\r\n bend\r\n with your kin.\r\n In each of the five-line stanzas a single syllable or foot occupies the fourth\r\n line: \"race,\" spade,\" and \"bend.\" These verbs stand out, not only for their brevity\r\n and positioning but also for their harsh meanings: race signifies both downward\r\n movement and blackness; spade is both a shovel and a colloquial term for Negro;\r\n 16 M. H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms , eighth edition, with Geoffrey Gait Harpham (Boston:\r\n Thompson Wadsworth, 2005), 50.\r\n 82 CLA JOURNAL\r\nThis content downloaded from \r\n202.131.110.60 on Mon, 03 Mar 2025 04:43:30 UTC \r\nAll use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms","",{"_222":337,"_338":357,"_340":358,"_342":343,"_344":343,"_345":346,"_90":-5},""," \"When Great Trees Fall\": The Poetry of Maya Angelou\r\n bend represents not only the girl's rubber knees but also the heavy pull of a tree\r\n during a lynching.\r\n Sadly, not all of Angelou's poems have this kind of impact. Some are mere word\r\n games or childhood chants that take a wide-eyed delight in the rhythms of song, as\r\n in \"Harlem Hopscotch\" (WP 510) and \"Times-Square-Shoeshine-Composition\"\r\n ( WP 34-35). The latter is a worker's song that depends heavily on the repetition of\r\n the words \"pow wow.\" Jacqueline A. Thursby states that the rhythm and repetitious\r\n sounds \"reflect the pace of his work and keep his tedious polishing of leather\r\n shoes stimulating and alive.\"17 Still, these internal repetitions are often jarring and\r\n limited in meaning, like the \"pow wow\" refrain, above, or the \"Whoppa, Whoppa\r\n / Whoppa, Whoppa\" of \"Worker's Song\" (WP 223). Although she may be using\r\n nonsense sounds to capture the weary syncopations of the shoeshine cloth or the\r\n carpenter's hammer, the contrived repetition does little to enhance the poems'\r\n effectiveness.\r\n A few of Angelou's word games suffer from what might be called the Roget's\r\n Syndrome; reportedly, she took Roget's Thesaurus, the Bible, and a bottle of\r\n Sherry for her early morning writing sessions.18 Too often Angelou employs large\r\n words in an inappropriate context, for example in \"California Prodigal\" (CP\r\n 141-42), in which words like \"antiquitous,\" \"gelid,\" \"nestle,\" \"phantasmatalities,\"\r\n and\"fulminant\" have no rhyme or reason. Such an abundance of pedantic language\r\n contrasts sharply with some of Angelou's more direct and poignant lyrics, my two\r\n favorites being \"The Traveler\" (CP 157), an eight-line ballad that addresses the\r\n theme of loneliness, and \"When Great Trees Fall\" (CP 266-67), a poem that could\r\n fittingly serve as her epitaph.\r\n \"The Traveler,\" with its stanzas of four lines each, is a variation of the ballad\r\n form:\r\n Byways and bygone\r\n And lone nights long\r\n Sun rays and sea waves\r\n And star and stone\r\n Manless and friendless\r\n No cave my home\r\n This is my torture\r\n My long nights, lone\r\n 17 Critical Companion to Maya Angelou (New York: Facts on File, Inc., 201 1), 247.\r\n 18 See Angelou's interview with Carol Sarler, \"A Life in the Day of Maya Angelou,\" in Jeffrey M. Elliot,\r\n ed., Conversations with Maya Angelou (Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1989), 214-17.\r\n CLA JOURNAL 83\r\nThis content downloaded from \r\n202.131.110.60 on Mon, 03 Mar 2025 04:43:30 UTC \r\nAll use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms","",{"_222":337,"_338":355,"_340":356,"_342":343,"_344":343,"_345":346,"_90":-5},""," Mary Jane Lupton\r\n The fairly unusual rhyme scheme of aaba, altered in the second stanza to cada ,\r\n is complemented by the use of off-rhyme (bygone, long, stone, home). The lines are\r\n very short- two feet instead of the anticipated longer lines of the standard ballad.\r\n The narrator is \"friendless\" and \"manless\"; the emptiness of the less \" suffixes\r\n emphasizes her absolute isolation. The poem has no punctuation other than a\r\n comma in the eighth line, followed by the key word lone, which marks both the\r\n final signal of separation and the abrupt end of the poem. This brief and agonizing\r\n lyric is probably the best of Angelou's many poems dealing with the theme of\r\n unrequited love.\r\n \"When Great Trees Fair' (CP 266-67), the penultimate work in The Complete\r\n Collected Poems , immediately precedes \"On the Pulse of Morning.\" Like many of\r\n Angelou's lyrics it is structured through the repetition of a major clause- \"When\r\n great trees fair'- which again appears at the beginning of the second stanza. In the\r\n third stanza the image shifts from \"trees\" to \"souls\": \"When great souls die, / The\r\n air around us becomes / Light, rare, sterile.\" After the death of great souls, \"Our\r\n minds, formed /and informed by their / radiance, / fall away.\" Images of trees, rocks,\r\n lions, and elephants appear in the two opening stanzas. With the introduction of\r\n the soul theme in stanza three, the words become nebulous, vague, relegated to the\r\n mind and to memory. The tone becomes somber, elegiac. There are no rhymes.\r\n The famous verb to rise is replaced by the verb to fall The poem ends in past tense:\r\n \"They existed. They existed. / We can be. Be and be / better. For they existed.\"\r\n \"When Great Trees Fall\" was published in Angelou's last individual volume of\r\n poetry, I Shall Not Be Moved (1990). Angelou was sixty-two years old. Her political\r\n heroes, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. had fallen more than two decades\r\n earlier. Her failing mother, Vivian Baxter, was to die in Winston-Salem during the\r\n following year.19 Yet at the age of sixty- two Dr. Maya Angelou's life and career\r\n were on the rise. She had begun to earn honorary degrees. She had a dedicated\r\n following, especially among college audiences, where she would wow the crowd\r\n with her sharp witticisms and her vibrant poetry, as she most certainly did the\r\n first time I heard her perform in 1995 at Towson State University in Baltimore,\r\n Maryland. Numerous appearances on television, at national conferences, and on\r\n university podiums gave Dr. Angelou a visibility rare among American poets.\r\n She received her greatest visibility, however, when, at the age of sixty-five, she\r\n read \"On the Pulse of Morning\" for the Inauguration of President William Clinton\r\n on January 20, 1993.20 Before Angelou, only one other American poet, Robert Frost,\r\n had read an inaugural poem, at the 1961 ceremony honoring John F. Kennedy.\r\n 19 Maya Angelou: Her Phenomenal Life and Poetic Journey (New York: Essence Books, 2014), 106.\r\n 20 1 am forever indebted to the late Dolly McPherson for having provided me with an early video tape\r\n of that reading for my personal use.\r\n 84 CLA JOURNAL\r\nThis content downloaded from \r\n202.131.110.60 on Mon, 03 Mar 2025 04:43:30 UTC \r\nAll use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms","",{"_222":337,"_338":353,"_340":354,"_342":343,"_344":343,"_345":346,"_90":-5},""," \"When Great Trees Fall\": The Poetry of Maya Angelou\r\n Maya Angelou was the first African American and the first woman to share the\r\n Presidential stage. When she read \"On the Pulse of Morning\" (CP 270-73) she, like\r\n the untarnished president, offered the dream of hope to the world, whose citizens\r\n she lists one by one:\r\n You, the Turk, the Arab, the Swede\r\n The German, the Eskimo, the Scot,\r\n The Italian, the Hungarian, the Pole,\r\n You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought,\r\n Sold, stolen, arriving in a nightmare,\r\n Praying for a dream.\r\n \"On the Pulse of Morning\" is a long poem, more than one hundred lines,\r\n basically unrhymed, televised on satellite around the world and still available on\r\n YouTube. 21 Because of its length and its gravity, I tend to think of it as an ode,\r\n which M. H. Abrams defines as a \"long lyric poem that is serious in subject and\r\n treatment, elevated in style, and elaborate in its stanzaic structure.\" 22 It resembles\r\n the informal, irregular pattern of the English ode, popularized by the British\r\n Romantic poets during the nineteenth century. It is also an aubade , a lyric poem\r\n about the morning, since it is dedicated to the \"pulse of this new day,\" to the dawn\r\n of a new administration. The final words of the poem are \"Good morning.\"\r\n The Inaugural Ode consists of sixteen stanzas of irregular length. Its structure\r\n depends on three major images, all introduced in the first line: \"A Rock, A River,\r\n A Tree.\" Each of these images immediately evokes a host of Judeo-Christian\r\n associations: Saint Peter; the river Jordan; the true cross; the Forbidden Tree of\r\n Genesis . The symbols may also suggest the triad of images - star/lilac/bird~in\r\n \"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed,\" Walt Whitman's elegy to another\r\n American president, Abraham Lincoln 23 But Angelous audience includes many\r\n nations and many creeds: the Muslim, the Ashanti, the Apache. The poet is very\r\n careful that her homage to Peace is not limited to a Western vision. A rock, a river,\r\n and a tree are dominant images in all known cultures, from Asia; to South America;\r\n to West Africa, where Angelou had resided from 1961 through 1964.\r\n \"On the Pulse of Morning\" was influenced by African American poetry,\r\n especially the Langston Hughes poem, \"A Negro Sings of Rivers\" (1921), which\r\n resembles Angelous ode in its broad geographical focus and its celebration of the\r\n 21 You Tube, clintonlibrary42, 174946. Web. Video.\r\n 22 Abrams and Harpham, 206-07.\r\n 23 \"When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd,\" The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Fourth Edition, ed.\r\n Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy (N.Y: Norton, 1996), 978-84.\r\n CLA JOURNAL 85\r\nThis content downloaded from \r\n202.131.110.60 on Mon, 03 Mar 2025 04:43:30 UTC \r\nAll use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms","",{"_222":337,"_338":351,"_340":352,"_342":343,"_344":343,"_345":346,"_90":-5},""," Mary Jane Lupton\r\n \"ancient, dusty rivers\" of the world. 24 It also recalls a poem by Jean Toomer, \"Brown\r\n River, Smile\" in its symbolic use of the river; in its praise of other races; and in\r\n Toomer's cry for a \"new America / to be spiritualized by each new American,\" a\r\n plea that seems to summarize the ideology of \"On the Pulse of Morning.\"25 Like\r\n Hughes and Toomer before her, Angelou speaks for all African Americans in their\r\n universal quest for peace and freedom, but she speaks through the voice of the\r\n sacred river: \"Come, clad in peace, / And I will sing the songs / The Creator gave to\r\n me when I and the / Tree and the Rock were one.\"\r\n In a feat of extraordinary ventriloquism, Angelou has each of these natural\r\n objects - the Rock, the River, and the Tree- address a transfixed international\r\n audience while the new President of the United States listens a few feet away. Her\r\n dramatic reading marks the culmination of the African American oral tradition,\r\n for Dr. Maya Angelou is the direct descendent of those freed slaves who stood on\r\n platforms at abolitionist gatherings to express their concerns about one of the\r\n country's vilest institutions. The ode also echoes the rhetorical elegance of the\r\n African American sermon, as practiced by her heroes Martin Luther King Jr. and\r\n Malcolm X.\r\n It is also important to remember Angelous sojourn in Ghana, where she was a\r\n friend of poet Kwesi Brew and of folk specialist Efua Sutherland, artists who helped\r\n her make contact with African oral tradition and with contemporary African\r\n poetry.26 These connections are most dynamic in the animistic undercurrents of\r\n the ode. Many traditional West African religions claim that the elements of nature\r\n are part of a spiritual life in which skulls, trees, masks, and drums are capable of\r\n speech and cognition. One finds such concepts in contemporary African poems -\r\n Leopold Senghor s \"Prayer to Masks;\" David Diop's \"Africa, to My Mother;\" Birago\r\n Diops \"Vanity.\"27 The speaking objects in \"On the Pulse of Morning,\" the Rock,\r\n the River, and the Tree, underscore the ancient West African belief that Angelou\r\n had described in Wouldn't Take Nothing for my Journey Now (1993): \"All things are\r\n inhabited by spirits which must be appeased and to which one can appeal. So, for\r\n example, when a master drummer prepares to carve a new drum, he approaches\r\n the selected tree and speaks to the spirit residing there.\"28 Angelous breadth of\r\n references to the African and African American traditions, epitomized by the oral\r\n 24 Selected Poems ofLangston Hughes (New York: Vintage, 1990), 4.\r\n 25 Toomer, Black Voices , ed. Abraham Chapman (New York: New American Library, 1968), 378-81.\r\n 26 Angelou, in Lupton, 152-54.\r\n 27 These three poems are anthologized in The African Assertion: A Critical Anthology of African\r\n Literature , ed. Austin J. Shelton (New York: The Odyssey Press), 1968.\r\n 28 Angelou 33.\r\n 86 CLA JOURNAL\r\nThis content downloaded from \r\n202.131.110.60 on Mon, 03 Mar 2025 04:43:30 UTC \r\nAll use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms","",{"_222":337,"_338":349,"_340":350,"_342":343,"_344":343,"_345":346,"_90":-5},""," \"When Great Trees Fall\": The Poetry of Maya Angelou\r\n elements of speech-making and elocution inherent in both, contributes to the\r\n vigor and credibility of the Inaugural Ode.\r\n Of Angelou's other public or occasional poems, only \"On the Pulse of Morning\"\r\n was written early enough to be included in the Random House 1994 Complete\r\n Collected Poems , although Angelou's publisher has announced that a new edition\r\n of The Complete Poetry will be released on March 31, 20 15.29 The other occasional\r\n poems are: \"A Brave and Startling Truth\" (June 1995), read in San Francisco to\r\n celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations; \"Million Man\r\n March Poem\" (October 16, 1995), read before a large gathering in Washington, D.C\r\n ; \"Amazing Peace\" (December 1, 2005), a poem read in Washington to celebrate\r\n the lighting of the National Christmas Tree; a poem/statement honoring Hilary\r\n Clinton, published in the London Observer on January 20, 2008; an elegy, \"We Had\r\n Him,\" written for the funeral of Michael Jackson (July 7, 2009); and an elegy \"His\r\n Day is Done: A Tribute Poem for Nelson Mandela\" (December 10, 2013).\r\n \"A Brave and Startling Truth\" is similar to \"On the Pulse of Morning\" in\r\n its length, its elevated style, and its message of world peace as viewed from a\r\n multicultural perspective. Its opening phrase \"We, this people,\" recalls the first lines\r\n of both the Preamble to the United States Constitution and the first line of United\r\n Nations Charter. 30 The repetition of the phrases \"We, this people\" and \"When we\r\n come to it\" lends a chant-like quality to the ode. Also effective are the numerous\r\n geographical references: the Gardens of Babylon, the Pyramids, the Danube, the\r\n Mississippl. \"A Brave and Startling Truth\" is a hopeful poem and a fitting tribute to\r\n an organization aspiring to world unity.\r\n When Angelou spoke three months later at the Million Man March in\r\n Washington, she recited a poem quite different in tone from the earlier ones. It\r\n is an energetic, rhymed account of the hardships of black men, with a repeated\r\n chorus: \"The night has been long, / The wound has been deep. / The pit has been\r\n dark, / And the walls have been steep.\" 31 In preacher-like fashion she calls for a\r\n clapping of hands: \"Clap hands, let us come together and reveal our hearts.\" This\r\n spirited public poem ends with a modification of Angelou's favorite aphorism:\r\n \"And still we rise.\" Amazing Peace : A Christmas Poem was performed during the\r\n Holiday season of 2005 and was immediately published by Random House as a\r\n mini-book. The title is a reference to the great hymn \"Amazing Grace.\" The poem\r\n opens with a thundering avalanche, which gradually \"ebbs to silence\" as hope is\r\n 29 http://www.randomhouse.com/book/248215/the-complete-poetrv-by-mava-angelou. Web. 6 Dec.\r\n 2014.\r\n 30 Mark Leon Goldberg, \"Maya Angelou's Ode to the United Nations,\" http://www.undispatch.com/\r\n maya-angelous/. May 28, 2014. Web. 1 1 Aug,, 2014. This site contains the entire text of the poem.\r\n 31 The text is available from PoemHunter.com and other web sources.\r\n CLA JOURNAL 87\r\nThis content downloaded from \r\n202.131.110.60 on Mon, 03 Mar 2025 04:43:30 UTC \r\nAll use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms","",{"_222":337,"_338":347,"_340":348,"_342":343,"_344":343,"_345":346,"_90":-5},""," Mary Jane Lupton\r\n \"born again in the faces of children.\" Although these children are of all races and\r\n ethnicities - \"the Jew, and the Jainist, the Catholic and the Confucian\" - Angelous\r\n celebration of Peace has a primarily Christian orientation, which is not surprising\r\n given her subject. A year later Random House published another small book,\r\n Mother : A Cradle to Hold Me. The rather formless poem is a tribute to all mothers\r\n but especially to Vivian Baxter. It ends with the lines \"I thank you, Mother / 1 love\r\n you.\"\r\n Angelous 2008 tribute to Hillary Clinton was written for the London Observer\r\n and printed in paragraph form in the Guardian . 32 Angelou was supporting Hillary\r\n Rodham Clinton in her bid for the 2008 Democratic nomination; when The\r\n Observer asked her for a praise-poem, she responded with a surprisingly empty,\r\n flat and specious celebration of Hillary \"the woman.\" The poem begins with four\r\n lines from Angelous \"Still I Rise\" and ends with an imperative: \"Rise Hillary. /\r\n Rise.\" After her candidate lost the nomination, she switched her drawing power to\r\n the young African American candidate, Barack Obama, who awarded Dr. Angelou\r\n the coveted Presidential Medal of Freedom Award in 201 1,\r\n \"We Had Him,\" her elegy to singer/dancer Michael Jackson, was read at his\r\n memorial service in 2009 not by the author but by the dynamic black actress\r\n Queen Latifah. The poem, which consistently repeats the simple rhythmic title,\r\n is, like her odes to the Inauguration and to the United Nations, international in\r\n scope. It recalls Jackson's effect on audiences not only in the United States but also\r\n in Tokyo, France, Ghana, and South Africa. And above all it celebrates Jackson's\r\n enormous achievements in dance and song, arts so very close to Angelous heart\r\n and to her life. 33 To my knowledge her final notable public poem was a tribute to\r\n South African leader Nelson Mandela, whom she compared to the Hebrew King\r\n David for having defeated the mighty Goliath.34\r\n Dr. Maya Angelou died on May 28, 2014. Of the many mourners who paid\r\n homage at the funeral held June 7, 2014 at Wake Forest University, one was former\r\n President Clinton, there to bid one final \"Good Morning.\"35 Another was Maya\r\n Angelous son, Guy Johnson, who talked about his mother's suffering and her\r\n 32 The text and commentary can be found in Vanessa Thorpe, \"Maya Angelous Poem in Praise of\r\n Hillary,\" The Observer , 19 January, 2008. http;//www,theguardian,CQni/ wprld/ 2Q03 /jan/2Q/ usa,\r\n poetry Web. 6 Dec, 2014.\r\n 33 Michael Jackson's Funeral, You Tube http://www.mtv.com/news/1615416/maya-angelous-poem-\r\n about-michael-iackson-we-had-him/ Web. 6 Nov. 2014. Video.\r\n 34 \"His Day is Done: A Tribute Poem for Nelson Mandela,\" State Department, http://youtu.be/\r\n PqOzjit7blw. December 10, 2013. Web. 12 Dec. 2014. Video.\r\n 35 Funeral of Maya Angelou, http://new.livestream.com/wfu/angelou. Web. 6.Nov., 2014. Video.\r\n 88 CLA JOURNAL\r\nThis content downloaded from \r\n202.131.110.60 on Mon, 03 Mar 2025 04:43:30 UTC \r\nAll use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms","",{"_222":337,"_338":339,"_340":341,"_342":343,"_344":343,"_345":346,"_90":-5},""," \"When Great Trees Fall\": The Poetry of Maya Angelou\r\n courage during her final ten years. The formal program contained his poem \"The\r\n Last Oasis,\" composed in 1991, two years prior to Angelous reading of \"On the\r\n Pulse of Morning\" \"The Last Oasis\" celebrates a gifted and beloved traveler who\r\n had \"drunk deeply / from sweet water that rises from sandstone beds.\" When\r\n he spoke on stage Johnson concluded his remarks with another of his poems, a\r\n sonnet that ends with the image \"This star, this nova, is my mother.\" They are\r\n phenomenal poems. His mother would have been proud both of the poems and of\r\n the performance.\r\n Works Cited\r\n Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Eighth Edition. With Geoffrey Gait Harpham. Boston:\r\n Thompson Wadsworth, 2005. Print.\r\n The African Assertion : A Critical Anthology of African Literature. Ed. Austin J. Shelton. New York: The\r\n Odyssey Press, 1968. Print.\r\n Angelou, Maya. Amazing Peace. New York: Random House, 2005. Print.\r\n - . \"A Brave and Startling Truth.\" In Mark Leon Goldberg. \"Maya Angelous Ode to the United\r\n Nations, http://www.undispatch.com/maya-angelous/ May 28, 2014. Web. 11 Aug., 2014.\r\n Video.\r\n - . The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou. New York: Random House, 1994.\r\n - . Even the Stars Get Lonesome. New York: Random House, 1997.\r\n - . Hallelujah! The Welcome Table. New York: Random House, 2004.\r\n - \"His Day is Done: A Tribute Poem for Nelson Mandela,\" State Department, http://youtu.be/\r\n PqOziit7blw. December 10, 2013. Web. 12 Dec. 2014. Video.\r\n - . \"Million Man March Poem.\" PoemHunter.com. Web. 12 Aug. 2014.\r\n - . \"On the Pulse of Morning.\" https;//w>vwlyputube,ÇQm/watçh?v=59xQmHgçtZ4 Dec. 18, 2012.\r\n Web. 10 Nov.2014. Video.\r\n - . Phenomenal Woman; Four Poems Celebrating Women. New York: Random House, 1995. Print.\r\n - .. \"In Praise of Hilary Clinton.\" In Vanessa Thorpe, The Observer , 19 January, 2008. http://www.\r\n theguardian.com/world/2008/jan/20/usa.poetry\r\n - . A Song Flung Up to Heaven. New York: Random House, 2003. Print.\r\n - . \"We Had Him.\" http://www.mtv.com/news/1615416/mava-angelous-poem-about-michael-\r\n iackson-we-had-him. 7 Iiilv. 2009. Web. 6 Oct. 2014. Video.\r\n - . Woulàrìt Take Nothing for My Journey Now. New York; Bantam Books, 1994. Print.\r\n The Baptist Standard Hymnal. Ed. 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Poem Analysis A Constable Calls