Remembering the Words and Wisdom of Maya Angelou
On May 28, the world lost one of its most powerful voices when Maya Angelou died at the age of 86. Although she’s known primarily as a poet and author, she also rose to international prominence as a civil rights activist, speaker, mentor and teacher. Her overarching message was about the transformative power of words, of forgiveness and of love.
Born 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri, she was raised in Sparks, Arkansas, where a violent childhood trauma left her mute for five years. The experience provided the basis of her most famous book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She went on to become a singer, dancer, stage and screen producer, and editor of an English language newspaper in Cairo, Egypt.
She taught in Ghana, served as lecturer at UCLA and was appointed as a lifetime faculty member at Wake Forest University. She read her poetry at the presidential inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993 and in 2011 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
During her innumerable speeches and interviews, Dr. Angelou provided us with enough pearls of wisdom to fill several volumes of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. Her final public message, sent out through her Twitter feed just five days before her death was, “Listen to yourself and in that quietude you might hear the voice of God.”
But everyone should carry a few lines of poetry. Here are some of our favorites from Maya Angelou’s work:
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.
– On the Pulse of Morning
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
– Alone
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.
– Still I Rise
I note the obvious differences
between each sort and type,
but we are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
– Human Family
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
– Phenomenal Woman
We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.
– Touched by an Angel
We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth
– A Brave and Startling Truth
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eyes, and into
Your brother’s face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.
– On the Pulse of Morning