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Sam Diener suggests that Maya Angelou's "On the Pulse of Morning", her poem for the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993, is loosely based on "September 1", and may reference the line "ironic points of light" (as George HW Bush's campaign speeches may have).
The reference is extremely indirect - perhaps Diener refers to the lines "Each of you a bordered country,/ Delicate and strangely made proud," or perhaps: |
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the teacher.
They hear. They all hear.
It is interesting that Angelou's poem deals with the public and the private, as Blanton suggests that Auden does with the references to Thucydides and Nijinsky.
Angelou also references the kind of history that Auden, Kramer, and Thucydides deal with. She says:
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage,
Need not be lived again.
This, unlike what Thucydides says, suggests that the errors of the past can be avoided. This is unlike what Auden foresees in "September 1", and perhaps more like what Kramer warns against in The Normal Heart.
In an interview with The Paris Review, Angelou talked about some of her purposes in writing:
INTERVIEWER
James Baldwin, along with a lot of writers in this series, said that “when you’re writing you’re trying to find out something you didn’t know.” When you write do you search for something that you didn’t know about yourself or about us?
ANGELOU
Yes. When I’m writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we’re capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness. I’m trying for that. But I’m also trying for the language. I’m trying to see how it can really sound. I really love language. I love it for what it does for us, how it allows us to explain the pain and the glory, the nuances and the delicacies of our existence. And then it allows us to laugh, allows us to show wit. Real wit is shown in language. We need language.
This approach, perhaps, has something in common with what Mike Douse of the Yeats Society says of Auden's work:
“What Auden wanted was “poetry that reflected the formal and linguistic lessons of modernism yet could still serve the public good… art intent less on autonomy and stasis than on enlightenment and action.” Auden regularly described poetry as a verbal puzzle, akin to a crossword. Auden’s love of complicated verse forms and unusual words was doubtless partly an expression of a poet’s delight in the resources of language and his ability to manipulate it skilfully."
Angelou goes on to talk about some other points of her writing. Some excerpts from the interview include:
I’ve never felt the need to prove anything to an audience. I’m always concerned about who I am to me first—to myself and God.
INTERVIEWER
If you had to endow a writer with the most necessary pieces of equipment, other than, of course, yellow legal pads, what would these be?
ANGELOU
Ears. Ears. To hear the language. But there’s no one piece of equipment that is most necessary. Courage, first.
INTERVIEWER
Did you ever feel that you could not get your work published? Would you have continued to write if Random House had returned your manuscript?
ANGELOU
I didn’t think it was going to be very easy, but I knew I was going to do something. The real reason black people exist at all today is because there’s a resistance to a larger society that says you can’t do it—you can’t survive. And if you survive, you certainly can’t thrive. And if you thrive, you can’t thrive with any passion or compassion or humor or style. There’s a saying, a song that says, “Don’t you let nobody turn you ’round, turn you ’round. Don’t you let nobody turn you ‘round.” Well, I’ve always believed that. So knowing that, knowing that nobody could turn me ’round, if I didn’t publish, well, I would design this theater we’re sitting in. Yes. Why not? Some human being did it. I agree with Terence. Terence said homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto. I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me. When you look up Terence in the encyclopedia, you see beside his name, in italics, sold to a Roman senator, freed by that Senator. He became the most popular playwright in Rome. Six of his plays and that statement have come down to us from 154 b.c. This man, not born white, not born free, without any chance of ever receiving citizenship, said, I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me. Well, I believe that. I ingested that, internalized that at about thirteen or twelve. I believed if I set my mind to it, maybe I wouldn’t be published but I would write a great piece of music or do something about becoming a real friend. Yes, I would do something wonderful. It might be with my next-door neighbor, my gentleman friend, with my lover, but it would be wonderful as far as I could do it. So I never have been very concerned about the world telling me how successful I am. I don’t need that.
INTERVIEWER
You mentioned courage . . .
ANGELOU
. . .the most important of all the virtues. Without that virtue you can’t practice any other virtue with consistency.
Another site quotes her as saying:
“Words are things… Some day we’ll be able to measure the power of words. I think they are things. They get on the walls. They get in your wallpaper. They get in your rugs, in your upholstery, and your clothes, and finally in to you.”
So Angelou belives in the power of words to change people and to help them evade the repetitions of history.
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the teacher.
They hear. They all hear.
It is interesting that Angelou's poem deals with the public and the private, as Blanton suggests that Auden does with the references to Thucydides and Nijinsky.
Angelou also references the kind of history that Auden, Kramer, and Thucydides deal with. She says:
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage,
Need not be lived again.
This, unlike what Thucydides says, suggests that the errors of the past can be avoided. This is unlike what Auden foresees in "September 1", and perhaps more like what Kramer warns against in The Normal Heart.
In an interview with The Paris Review, Angelou talked about some of her purposes in writing:
INTERVIEWER
James Baldwin, along with a lot of writers in this series, said that “when you’re writing you’re trying to find out something you didn’t know.” When you write do you search for something that you didn’t know about yourself or about us?
ANGELOU
Yes. When I’m writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we’re capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness. I’m trying for that. But I’m also trying for the language. I’m trying to see how it can really sound. I really love language. I love it for what it does for us, how it allows us to explain the pain and the glory, the nuances and the delicacies of our existence. And then it allows us to laugh, allows us to show wit. Real wit is shown in language. We need language.
This approach, perhaps, has something in common with what Mike Douse of the Yeats Society says of Auden's work:
“What Auden wanted was “poetry that reflected the formal and linguistic lessons of modernism yet could still serve the public good… art intent less on autonomy and stasis than on enlightenment and action.” Auden regularly described poetry as a verbal puzzle, akin to a crossword. Auden’s love of complicated verse forms and unusual words was doubtless partly an expression of a poet’s delight in the resources of language and his ability to manipulate it skilfully."
Angelou goes on to talk about some other points of her writing. Some excerpts from the interview include:
I’ve never felt the need to prove anything to an audience. I’m always concerned about who I am to me first—to myself and God.
INTERVIEWER
If you had to endow a writer with the most necessary pieces of equipment, other than, of course, yellow legal pads, what would these be?
ANGELOU
Ears. Ears. To hear the language. But there’s no one piece of equipment that is most necessary. Courage, first.
INTERVIEWER
Did you ever feel that you could not get your work published? Would you have continued to write if Random House had returned your manuscript?
ANGELOU
I didn’t think it was going to be very easy, but I knew I was going to do something. The real reason black people exist at all today is because there’s a resistance to a larger society that says you can’t do it—you can’t survive. And if you survive, you certainly can’t thrive. And if you thrive, you can’t thrive with any passion or compassion or humor or style. There’s a saying, a song that says, “Don’t you let nobody turn you ’round, turn you ’round. Don’t you let nobody turn you ‘round.” Well, I’ve always believed that. So knowing that, knowing that nobody could turn me ’round, if I didn’t publish, well, I would design this theater we’re sitting in. Yes. Why not? Some human being did it. I agree with Terence. Terence said homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto. I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me. When you look up Terence in the encyclopedia, you see beside his name, in italics, sold to a Roman senator, freed by that Senator. He became the most popular playwright in Rome. Six of his plays and that statement have come down to us from 154 b.c. This man, not born white, not born free, without any chance of ever receiving citizenship, said, I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me. Well, I believe that. I ingested that, internalized that at about thirteen or twelve. I believed if I set my mind to it, maybe I wouldn’t be published but I would write a great piece of music or do something about becoming a real friend. Yes, I would do something wonderful. It might be with my next-door neighbor, my gentleman friend, with my lover, but it would be wonderful as far as I could do it. So I never have been very concerned about the world telling me how successful I am. I don’t need that.
INTERVIEWER
You mentioned courage . . .
ANGELOU
. . .the most important of all the virtues. Without that virtue you can’t practice any other virtue with consistency.
Another site quotes her as saying:
“Words are things… Some day we’ll be able to measure the power of words. I think they are things. They get on the walls. They get in your wallpaper. They get in your rugs, in your upholstery, and your clothes, and finally in to you.”
So Angelou belives in the power of words to change people and to help them evade the repetitions of history.