I want to like her stuff, because I know she went through a lot of hard times in her early years and I have respect for people who have overcome personal hardship.
However, in all honesty, her poetry doesn’t seem like anything special to me. I definitely don’t like that Phenomenal Woman poem. The rhymes are not very creative and the sentiment is rather hokey. Perhaps back in the era when it was written it seemed more exciting and fresh simply to express such sentiments. shrug
I’ve never been able to “get” poetry the way it’s supposed to be understood, but I hear more “feh” than I do “wooHOO” about hers.
I think she’s probably a great person, but her art doesn’t speak to me. One thing I have noticed is that her normal speech patterns strike me as forced poetic. She’s always “on.”
There always seems to be someone that gets defaulted to because people are too stupid/lazy to understand that critical thinking is a continuous process. So, Maya Angelou got defaulted to as “black woman poet” years ago and will probably forevermore be the figurehead of that, regardless of her worthiness, which is certainly debatable. There are probably hundreds, if not thousands of “black woman poets” that can blow her shit right out of the water that will never get the time of day because people will go “OK… black woman poet… Maya Angelou…OK my work’s done here” and never give it another thought.
This concept is applied universally, from the arts to politics, business, academics…everything. We’re stupid and lazy, we suck, and society is poorer for it.
I first saw her performing “And Still I Rise” on British TV in the '80s, and was interested enough to get a book of hers. There was a poem, can’t remember which, that described poverty in Mexico with the following image:
“kneeling mothers picking undigested beans from yesterday’s shit”
That really affected me. I don’t mind her work, and her life story (if true) is fascinating.
“Caged Bird” I liked a lot. Her poetry - eh. My problem is I associate her with that pontificating windbag Oprah Winfrey, which doesn’t do much for her in my eyes.
VCNJ~
Right. I like Oprah as a person, but I hate the “If Oprah Said It It Must Be True” syndrome. Maya was capulted to “household name” status because of her, and I’m sure there are others more worthy of that status. Again, I don’t get most poetry myself, so I’ll reserve judgement on her talent. But I won’t argue with those in the know who consider her mediocre.
Ms. Angelou is the original pontifcating windbag. She was a self-appointed “spokesperson” for African-American women when Ms. Winfrey was still a local newscaster in Nashville. Oprah learned at the foot of the Master, so to speak, not the other way around. Still I have a certain fondness for them both. The fact they have achieved overwhelming success when starting from disadvantaged backgrounds is inspirational to me as a black woman, no matter how hokey that might sound to some of you.
A lot (probably most) of Angelou’s poetry can make for trite reading, but does come alive when read/performed. Phenomenal Woman is “meh” on the printed page, but performed on stage by a young African American woman, it can be a moving experience.
I found “Caged Bird” to be something of a painful read, (because of some of the subject matter, not the style) but enjoyed the next four installments of her autobiography. And I read them (and her poetry) years before anyone ever heard of Oprah.
I don’t know a thing about poetry, but if Molly Ivins called her “twin sister,” she’s all right with me.
Maya Angelou is the Art Buchwald of poetry. She’s a good 20 years past her “sell by” date, is lionized because, well, she’s lionized, and would leave a far deeper imprint had she the good sense to burn 95 percent of her life’s work.
Scratch that, Maya Angelou is the Kenny G of wordsmithing.
I know I haven’t had my coffee yet, but for the life of me I can’t even parse the bolded part.
Burma Shave.
Well, it’s like … first of all, truculence. There’s a truck, you see. The walls of ignorance and prejudice and cruelty were built by someone driving a truck. Who’s driving that truck? U are – i.e., you are. And your name is Lance. So we need to stop the truck that you, Lance, are driving in order to overcome all of this negativity.
I don’t find your admiration of Oprah’s accomplishments hokey in the least. I admire her greatly for her business acumen and anytime a larger woman makes good - that’s aces by me 
I tend to lean towards Kalhoun’s analysis - the “if Oprah says it’s so, it must be!” thing.
VCNJ~
Poet and student of poetry checking in here. I’ve read lots of poetry, studied forms, all the devices, the whole nine yards. I took four college courses on poetry, starting with introductory critical reading and moving up to advanced forms. I was never a great poet, probably was not much better than a half-good poet, and I don’t really even write as a hobby anymore. I learned a few things: line breaks don’t make it poetry, and if you want to “throw off the shackles of patriarch grammer and spelling” you’d better have a good reason for it. (-(ditto if yr doing a bunch of crazylowercase tabbed-and-spaced shit like you’re e.e. cummings on l.s.d.)-) Having strong emotions is only the first (and easiest) step to writing a good poem.
Given that I absorbed all of these lessons and wrote work that surprised the professors, I’m willing to state that the poetry I wrote in college is better than Maya Angelou’s. Do not mistake this for an egotistical statement! Perhaps it is more accurate to say that Maya Angelou’s poetry is worse than poetry submitted for a deadline by an engineering student.
If you could find a college professor who hadn’t read Angelou’s poetry, and submitted one of her poems for a grade, I bet it would get a C. Maybe a B+ if you workshopped it.
That’s not blank verse, actually - blank verse has meter.
I don’t care for her poetry, and most of my colleagues in the English Dept. feel the same way.
I seem to remember liking the poem from the inauguration but it’s been a long time since I’ve read or heard it.
She has a line in one of her poems about being a “black ocean, leaping and wide,” right? When I was in college out student body president, who was black (still is, I imagine), caused great consternation by (mis-) quoting that line in response to some mild criticism leveled at him. Made for an effective distraction from “what the hell did he do?” to “what the hell is he talking about?”
I like And Still I Rise. I don’t care for poetry, though, so I’m not going to sit here and act like my opinion is worth much.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was the first autobiography I ever read (I read it when I was 13). I liked it.
Saturday Night Live: Maya Angelou for Pennzoil.
I found Caged Bird to be annoying and I find her poetry to be worse.
I think I liked Caged Bird when I read it when I was 14.
It was the only book I ever checked out from my school library and I forgot to return it. I always wondered if they noticed, but I graduated just fine. I guess no one else ever wanted to read it.