Phenomenal Woman: A Remembrance of Dr. Maya Angelou

Dr. Maya Angelou touched many lives in many different ways. She was a brilliant writer, poet, dancer, and humanitarian. For me, she has always been a part of the fabric of my life.

I grew up in a household where her name was common. My mother loved her work and quoted her often. For me, her name was associated with lyrical fragments and reverence. I actually did not read a complete poem or any of her prose until I was much older. Instead she just existed as a part of my childhood background.

Like Maya Angelou, I grew up in rural Arkansas. Every time we drove through Stamps on our way to Texarkana and beyond, my mother would turn me.

"Grace, do you know who lived here? Have I told you?"

"Yes, Momma."

"Maya Angelou grew up here. She was the same age as you."

"I know, Momma."

I accepted her existence with the casual indifference of a child. She wasn't real to me. She was a name, a few pretty words, but she had my mother's admiration. I knew she had to be something wonderful.

Through high school and college, I read a few of her poems, but not in any concerted manner. One verse, one image, did stick to my mind. Maybe it spoke to my adolescent sense of sexuality. Maybe it was the celebration of a woman's body. Maybe it was just the rhythm of her words. But they stuck with me.

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?

It wasn't until a few months ago that I realized how much in common I had with her. I finally picked up a copy of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. It blew me away. It was beautiful and tragic and harsh and uplifting. It was lyrical and gritty and intense. I was in love. 

Though I have thankfully not suffered the same tragedies as Ms. Angelou, I knew the town where she grew up. It was my town. Her neighbors were my neighbors. Her culture, my culture. It made me want to write about my childhood, about that isolated southern world were we both spent our formative years. 

Then on May 28th, 2014, Dr. Maya Angelou died. 

I've followed her on Facebook and that's where I heard the news. I was devastated. She had always existed for me. She was woven into the fabric of my understanding. She was gone and I would never get to meet her. I had to tell my mother.

That was a call I didn't want to make. I knew my love for Ms. Angelou paled in comparison to that of my mother's. I avoid the topic at first and then blurted it ungracefully. 

"Momma ... Maya Angelou died."

For the last week she's been on my mind. I see snippets of her poems and inspirational quotes everywhere. I've started my second novel that takes place in a small southern town and I see her in my words and characters. When I picked up I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I also bought a copy of her most recent autobiography about her relationship with her mother, Mom & Me & Mom. 

I skipped all the books in between because the central theme of the novel I'm writing focuses on the loving and destructive dynamic between a mother and daughter. I started and finished the book in a day.

It didn't have the same powerful impact as Caged Bird, but it was well written. It lacked some of the flowing lyricism, but I'm sure that's just an evolution of her writing style. She talked about her mother with the same awe and admiration I often feel for mine. Their relationship was tumultuous. Her mother left her at the age of three with her paternal grandmother. Betrayal, abandonment, and love wove a strong thread between these two strong women. It is definitely a book I would recommend, but only if you've read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. That book I recommend over all others.

And thought I'm sure many of you have read this in the days since her passing, I leave you with a video of the poet herself reciting her amazing work "Still I Rise."

A to Z Challenge: P is for Pantoum or "The Pantoum of the Great Recession"

P is for Pantoum, another poetic form. Apparently I'm on a poetry kick.   ;-)

We didn't pay attention.
It hit us out of a clear blue sky.
We should've known.
And some did.

It hit us out of a clear blue sky.
"We could've died."
And some did.
At least that's what they'll tell you.

"We could've died."
We whisper like praying.
At least that's what they'll tell you
As they balance their checkbooks and cry.

We whisper like praying.
The sky turns blood red
As they balance their checkbooks and cry
So much for the American Dream.

The sky turns blood red.
If only things were so literal.
So much for the American Dream.
There is no rest for us now.

If only things were so literal.
We should've known
There is no rest for us now.
We didn't pay attention.

A to Z Challenge: O is for OULIPO or "Because I could not stop for Decomposition"

Usually I don't like to provide much of an introduction or explanation for my poetry, but I felt this needed a little something. OULIPO is short for Ouvroir de littérature potentielle which roughly translates as "workshop of potential literature." It's a small group of mainly french writers and mathematicians. The pairing may seem odd, but they seek to create literature within vary confined parameters. There are a lot of different forms. A lipogram excludes a specific letter (La disparition by Perec is a 300 page novel that excludes the letter 'E'). A snowball is a poem in which each line is a single word, and each successive word is one letter longer.

I decided to go with N+7 rule. Basically, you take a work that already exists - a poem or a song or a novel - and replace every noun in the text with the seventh noun after it in a dictionary. Results will vary depending on what dictionary is used, and since I am at work, I was limited to an old thesaurus, but I kept with the N+7 results and came up with this little poem.

Because I could not stop for Decomposition

Because I could not stop for Decomposition -

He kindly stopped for me -

The Casket held but just Ourselves

And Imperfection.

We slowly drove - He knew no hazard

And I had put away

My lady and my lethargy too,

For his Clarity.

We passed the Scoundrel, where Chorus strove

At Reckoning - in the Rivalry - 

We passed the Film of Gazing Grass -

We passed the setting Superstition -

Or rather - He passed us -

The Diary drew quivering and chill -

For only Grace, my Grandmother -

My Toil - only Turmoil - 

We paused before a Hue that seemed

A Symbol of the Growth

The Root was scarcely visible -

The Corpse - in the Growth - 

Since then - 'tis Certainty - and yet

Feels shorter than the Death

I first surmised the Hosts' Health

Were toward Evening - 

Side Note: I tried this with a couple of poems, before settling on this one. The others were just completely unintelligible! 

A to Z Challenge: N is for Nippon

Painting by alexaink

Goddess of the sun,
sister to the storms and seas,
you sit like a bird
on a branch while the tree burns.
A crown of flames wreathes your face.

A to Z Challenge: F is for Father

"Father"

When I said "Daddy," I spoke to you.

The you that tucked me in 

And washed the pain from my broken skin

When I fell, as children do. 

When I said "Father," that was you too.

That was the you of hidden histories
and bones and lost identities.

The you that ran my heart through.

"We didn't want to tell you,"

You whispered through your beer

As Mom pretended not to hear.

"You weren't there. What else could I do?"

My vision shifted, the world askew

made me Atlantic-sick,

the ocean you picked

To cross, the country you picked to woo.

And they took you.

Despite the pain at your feet

And the secrets you keep

They pretended you were someone new.

But who, really, are you?

Daddy, Father. Empty words

that echo the countless voices unheard

because you only did what people do.

Now they scream at me, too,

From the camps and the ovens

and the smoke that rose to heaven.

Am I as guilty as you?

This much I know is true:

You fell, as fathers do. 

A to Z Challenge: C is for Calliope

They cry out for me as to a god,

As though creation is external.

Do not, dear mortals, be over-awed

For heads unfit still wear the laurel.

"Calliope!" My name has grown vast

Beyond the edges of my own ken.

The romance of myth, of ages past

Of what once was and what might have been.

Story itself has christened me 'muse'

And has thrust upon me this burden

Of inspiration, the spark and fuse.

What of the path that I determine?

For I was a mother long ago

And bore a son of most brilliant light.

I taught him words of strength - my sorrow!

For my lesson brought this lasting night.

The beauty of his words laid him low

Torn apart by jealousy and hate.

That was the harvest of my furrow!

What cruel twist - this irony of fate.

Muse, oh Muse! They exalt me on high,

Begging, pleading for a spark of grace.

For words they live, but by words they die

And leave forever mother's embrace

So call not to muses nor idols nor gods;
Rather look within for the path yet untrod.

Thanks everyone for reading my blog. I'm never really sure how what I write will be received, but I appreciate all of the encouragement I've been getting so far! Please keep reading and I promise there won't be too much in the way of archaic poetry (well... I say promise...) 

The Classics Project: The Color Purple

I know I wrote my review of Slaughterhouse Five just yesterday, but I literally read Alice Walker's The Color Purple in two evenings. I had actually been planning to read J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye next, but I was at the train station when I hit the abrupt ending of Slaughterhouse Five. My boyfriend and I had just been in an awesome little bookstore in downtown Denver called The Tattered Cover (check it out!) where I picked up a copy of Ms. Walker's classic for four dollars. So since Bob was still monopolizing my copy of Catcher, I started The Color Purple.

The Color Purple is the story of Celie, a young, bright, abused woman who gets married to spare her sister a life of drudgery and abuse. She and her sister become separated by men and time and continents. In many ways it's a story about a girl who finds what "God" means to her in a life of trials and hardships.

I can see why this book has so often been banned. On the very first page incestuous rape is mentioned casually as a fact of every day life. It goes on to question the idea of "God," the idea of marriage, of love. What does it mean to exist as a black woman in the pre-WWII South? Celie's experiences are heartbreaking, demeaning, intense, and, at times, beautiful. I cannot adequately describe how moving the story is. I can only say that there is a reason I finished it so quickly.

The book itself is an epistolary novel, meaning it is written as a series of letters. For the first half or more of the book, all of these letters are written by Celie and addressed "Dear God." As the story progresses we get to see some of Celie's sister, Nettie, and experience her life. Two very different lives - one in rural Georgia, one in the heart of the African Congo - are juxtaposed to show the growth of each sister. Both grow from young, victimized children to strong, compelling women.

One of the most spectacular elements, at least for me, is the language. Celie writes in a deep southern dialect and with little benefit of education. For most of the book I had to "hear" the words in my head to understand them, and at points, read them aloud. This may have slowed the speed of my reading a bit, but I got into the rhythm of Celie's speech surprisingly easily.

Having grown up in far South East Arkansas (where I was taught in social studies about the War of Northern Aggression), I was very familiar with this speech pattern. Many of the older people in the community spoke the same way as Celie so it was at once startling and comfortable for me. Much to my boyfriend's dismay, I fell back into those speech patterns myself. "What you doin'?" I asked at one point. He just stared up at me in horror.

Perhaps the most wonderful aspect - and one that shows Alice Walker's spectacular skill as a writer - is how organically poetry was woven into what some might think a backwoods, unrefined narrative. The story and the language itself become poetry.

He say, Celie, git the belt. The children be outside the room peeking through the cracks. It all I can do not to cry. I make myself wood. I say to myself, Celie, you a tree. That's how come I know trees fear man.

This awareness of the poetic is woven throughout what otherwise could become a depressing tale of oppression. But Alice Walker transcends individual sorrow, exposing the universal threads of womanhood, grief, and survival. This book is stunning. a beautiful and life changing read. I would read it again in a heartbeat.



And don't worry about me writing another Classics Project review tomorrow. I'm starting Anna Karenina and I dare say it'll take me longer than two evenings. Also, if you're interested, there is a wonderful documentary on Alice Walker by PBS's American Masters. You can watch it here.

Twitter: Shakespeare Style

So I've been posting an extended poem under the hashtags #twitter #poetry. It was interesting writing (and I'm sure reading!) a poem in such a fragmented manner, but for those of you who didn't cotton on, it was a sonnet, Shakespearean style. I'm posting the whole thing below for those who couldn't follow or just want to see it as one whole poem. Enjoy!

Twitter: A Sonnet

Here I must conform to limits on space
Where letters count and numbers hope to rise.
My thoughts still seek a vast unending place
That does not submit to shape or size.
They cannot fit in characters so small
Softly typed, a breath to the tempest world.
They speak only barely, if heard at all.
Only when seen are they a flag unfurled.
Yet still I type, my fingers pounding keys
An attempt to harness the things within
But the words do not heed my desperate pleas
Laughing at pride, my original sin.

Doggedly I sit, as day bleeds to night.
Hopeless, I know. What can I do? I write.