Ironies

On April 4, 2008, we will celebrate the 80th birthday of an extraordinary woman. Her childhood was spent shuttling back and forth from her grandma's dry goods store in Stamps, Arkansas, to her mother in St. Louis, Missouri.

Anyone who's read, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" will surely gain a deeper appreciation of the experiences which formed Maya Angelou as a woman, and as one of the Mothers in Struggle of the modern Civil Rights Movement in the United States. She has been a visiting lecturer at UCLA, an actor, a director, a Broadway producer, but most notably a writer. A writer of stories and songs and most of all, most sublimely, a writer of poetry. She taught at the University of Ghana at Accra in the 1960's and spent considerable time in that country, where, she once said, she felt more American, than she'd ever felt up until that point, in America.

She once wrote a beautiful poem, called "On the Pulse of Morning." And because of her Arkansas roots, she was invited to recite it in 1993, at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton. Her participation brought her to national prominence and to a whole new audience. There was a demand for copies of the poem which was rushed to print in a slim, attractive, hard-cover volume. Today, when many people think of Maya Angelou, they often think of Bill Clinton, and that wonderful moment in January, 1993, when she recited a poem at his inaugural.
So right now, with my mind at the boiling point with too many things to say, and a righteous sense of anger welling up in me, I realized I needed help to say what I felt needed saying.


I thought of Langston, and his Dream Deferred...I thought of Sterling Brown and his "Strong men just keep coming..." but then I remembered Maya. And another poem she'd written.
And I thought it suited the occasion very well:

And Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?'
Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard

'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise

Up from a past that's rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear,

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.