The Power and the Puzzle of the Poem; Reading Between Maya Angelou's Inaugural Lines

From: The Washington Post | Date: January 21, 1993| Author: | Copyright information

The poem Maya Angelou read to the nation yesterday stressed the huge variety of voices in this country and the world, all of them worthy, all of them equal. So perhaps it's appropriate that her fellow poets had a huge range of responses to "On the Pulse of Morning," the first poem read at a presidential inauguration in 32 years.

"Eloquent and passionate," said one. "Beautiful" asserted another. But a third felt it was "obvious and wearisome" while a fourth termed the work "incoherent."

Everyone, though, was united on this: Having a black woman poet was a wonderful symbol, and Angelou's ...

Read all of this article with a FREE trial to HighBeam Research

Related newspaper, magazine, and trade journal articles from HighBeam Research

(Including press releases, facts, information, and biographies)

JFK Library receives Frost poem; 'Dedication' speaks of the rise of American democracy and its affect on the world
; ...the original version of the poem that Robert Frost prepared...beginning of "Dedication," a poem he wrote by hand, then typed...the snow, Frost recited his poem, "The Gift Outright," from memory. Frost had intended...received the original handwritten poem this week from the estate ...
What is a Poem? Closing out National Poetry Month with a poetic delineation
; ...written and published today by America's poets is written in free (non-rhyming) verse. If a poem doesn't rhyme, you may ask, what makes it a poem? A poem is concentrated language that adds up to more than the sum of its parts. It's writing that...
Poem's curse takes hold as rival author says he's owning up
; ...mystery surrounding a controversial wartime poem which described the island of Orkney as...stationed on the island in 1942. From the poem's opening line, This bloody town's a bloody...decided recently to own up to writing the poem. He said: "After all the awful things I...
The Constant Rediscovery of a Poem
; ...Crabbit Old Woman." "Open Your Eyes." This poem, which has several different titles, has...poems (Guardian, 1998). On its own, the poem might be considered remarkable enough to...is accompanied by the same account: The poem was found in the locker of a frail old...
Understanding "The Waste Land"; Why Eliot's famous poem resists easy interpretation.(BOOKS)
; ...Eliot's The Waste Land, the mostfamous poem of the last century and only 17 years short...readers will have been first exposed to the poem in a classroom setting that sometimes encourages...really means. But it is inimical to the poem's ferocity, a word that Eliot used more...
A Poem of Pure Enjoyment
; A Poem of Pure Enjoyment Two MAJOR AMERICAN POEMS...parody of it was born almost as soon as the poem. So is the other, and in its day, it was the...everyone thinks are the opening lines of the poem: By the shores of Gitche Gumee, By the shining...
The Title to the Poem
; THE TITLE TO THE POEM. By Anne Ferry. Stanford. Stanford: Stanford...1996. 312 p. The title of The Title to the Poem might seem to suggest a topic of narrow...the few words that customarily precede a poem and signal the reader that he is about...
Coming the Jakarta: poetry, information, and disaster.(Peter Dale Scott's epic poem)
; ...essay on Bali cited so frequently in this poem. In order then to make time for things...three writer-academics who wrote on the poem for the 1990 issue of Agni Review (31/32...in Indonesian affairs as they read the poem. Robert Hass's review ends in fact with...
On Remembering Poetry.(poetry)(Poem)
; ...matter what I do you won't remember this poem. No matter how witty or well crafted it is, no matter how sublime the poem may rhyme, the lines will inevitably go...matter what I do, you won't remember this poem, It'll just slip right by your long-term...
Plath's 'Daddy.' (interpretation of Sylvia Plath's poem)
; Images of victimization in Sylvia Plath's poem Daddy - of Nazis, swastikas, barbed wire...frantic, imposing, and vituperative that the poem seems more out of control than it actually...to its many unexpected pauses, Plath's poem, indeed, seems like a runaway train barreling...