Confession time yet again.
I am not a lover of fine poetry. I cannot comment intelligently about a poem, or about the body of a poet’s work.
I do know a bad poem when I see it. It’s the good ones that often go beyond my meager understanding of some things.
When I heard about Maya Angelou’s death this week, I wasn’t saddened because we’d never get a fresh work of poetry from her.
Indeed, it’s interesting to me that I haven’t heard too many tributes about her poetic skills. And I guess that’s the fundamental point here. Maya Angelou was far more than someone who could craft poetry.
She was a trailblazer, a champion, a woman of immense courage.
http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2014/05/maya-angelou-a-woman-for-all-seasons.html/
She didn’t just write poems. She wrote autobiographical prose, such as “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” as Dallas Morning News blogger Jim Mitchell notes.
Mitchell writes of that work: “But its greatest contribution was that it was almost a modern slave narrative, reflecting experiences shared by many of her contemporaries — African-American women who came of age in the years of the Great Depression, before World War II and before Civil Rights became a movement. Her voice expressed the never-ending challenges of being black in America, mixing struggles for acceptance and respect with messages of communal and personal responsibility. She was part of a spectacular black literary era that included Lorraine Hansberry, Gwendolyn Brooks and James Baldwin among others who made possible Alice Walker, Rita Dove and Nikki Giovanni.”
She wrote the autobiography in 1969. She was an established literary giant by that time. She would go on to become a famed civil rights champion, sought out by presidents and other national and world leaders.
Maya Angelou’s work transcended the sometimes-esoteric world of poetry.
It’s that transcendence that gives me a measure of personal comfort in believing one didn’t have to know the nuts and bolts of great poetry to honor the memory of a great American.