A Thread About Maya Angelou

An RIP thread but also a discussion, I hope. I haven't read ...Caged Bird Sings, haven't read anything except a dozen poems, which didn't impress me as poetry; they were closer to lyrics. But her impact, especially on women, is immense, which I see every semester: she's one of the few writers whom men and women enjoy reading.

yeah, she's not exactly a poet's poet, but I can't front

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPiUHhQ_xXs

Similarly not a fan of the poetry, esp the inaugural laundry list.

She appears at 7:11 if you want to just see her reaction to drunk husband Pryor coming home... turns the sketch on a dime. I think this was the second time I'd seen her on TV (after Roots).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNFuxrxfM9c

She had a gorgeous brandy-soaked voice -- a natural performance.

I enjoyed her poetry a lot when I was younger, esp college

The main thing I love now is just the feeling the sound of her voice gives me. Reading her poems is one thing but hearing HER read them is something else entirely. Just listening to her speak, her inflections and pauses...I get happy just thinking about it

I feel like her and Nina Simone were part of set somewhere in a past life...I get the same feeling from both of them, this kind of indescribable peace and joyfulness and serenity, idk

anyone see that film she directed w/ Alfre Woodard, Al Freeman, Wesley Snipes etc?

that's beautiful, VG (xp)

Yeah, she was one of those mid-to-later 20th Century classic poet-performers--like Ginsberg, Burroughs, Kerouac, but more of a singer as well: a bit more range of musical delivery than Gil Scott-Heron (although he of course had the more unusual proto-rap gift too). She was a professional calypso singer when that was an American trend, made at least one album I've seen.

Yeah, she came out of the jazz-blues-folk social commentary etc. nexus, like Nina Simone, who could seem as much like a singing actress, singing poet; good call.

"she's one of the few writers whom men and women enjoy reading."

i think there are actually lots of these. especially in genre fiction.

you guys saw this, right? it seems like something you guys would have seen.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/378959/rip-maya-angelou-proud-gun-owner-and-user-tim-cavanaugh

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

RIP

"she's one of the few writers whom men and women enjoy reading."

i think there are actually lots of these. especially in genre fiction.

― scott seward, Wednesday, May 28, 2014 8:04 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah that's a really weird thing to say.

her voice made her sound a bit like an african-american lauren bacall.

well, I meant to say "young men and women" and, yeah, she has become, unwittingly or not (I don't 'think she minded being co-opted), a scion of inspirational/motivational psych lit, so she WAS genre fiction.

"It comes to this: there is no way, in the minds of most people, to have worked as a prostitute and not be ashamed of it. Most people believe there is no way to have held this job (and it is a job), move onto other things, and not consider it a 'seamy life' or 'shameful secret.' To most people, there is no way a woman of Maya Angelou's caliber could ever have performed as a sex worker. The idea just won't gel for them, but that doesn't mean it's not the truth. Maya Angelou: Poet Laureate, Pulitzer nominee, Tony Award winner, best selling author, poetess, winner of more than 50 honorary degrees, mother, sister, daughter, wife, National Medal of Arts winner, Presidential Medal of Freedom winner, consummate and powerful woman, artist, and former sex worker. Yes, the woman you love, the woman we all love, the incomparable Dr. Maya Angelou was a sex worker and she proved, in her life and her stories, that there's nothing wrong with it."

http://titsandsass.com/the-erasure-of-maya-angelou/

She was the first black female cable car driver in SF!

i never understood the appeal of her poems, think the autobiographies were great, and her legacy

read those as a teen (my mom was/is a huge fan) i was really blown away by her writing and her life

think got to book 3 or 4 and it was about her life as a singer/actress, having billie holiday over to dinner, hanging out with baldwin etc and i had no clue that she had had that aspect of her life as well and got blown away again. i had just been reading these books as a very well written personal memoir with no sense of her connections/intersections with so much history. r
emember reading in one of the books about her experience of doing first NYC production version of Genet's The Blacks with James Earl Jones, Roscoe Lee Browne, Lou Gossett, Jr., Cicely Tyson, Godfrey Cambridge (and think Roxie Roker from the Jeffersons and Lenny kravitz's mom was one of the understudies)

thanks to longform read an interesting interview with her from the paris review http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2279/the-art-of-fiction-no-119-maya-angelou