{"id":5699,"date":"2014-05-29T22:06:22","date_gmt":"2014-05-29T22:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=5699"},"modified":"2014-05-29T22:06:22","modified_gmt":"2014-05-29T22:06:22","slug":"tribute-to-maya-angelou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=5699","title":{"rendered":"Tribute to Maya Angelou"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

Confession time yet again.<\/p>\n

I am not a lover of fine poetry. I cannot comment intelligently about a poem, or about the body of a poet’s work.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

She was a trailblazer, a champion, a woman of immense courage.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com\/2014\/05\/maya-angelou-a-woman-for-all-seasons.html\/<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 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.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Maya Angelou’s work transcended the sometimes-esoteric world of poetry.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading Tribute to Maya Angelou<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1012,2965],"class_list":["post-5699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-civil-rights-movement","tag-maya-angelou"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}