James Baquet

    America has a sort of “official poet” called the Poet Laureate. The current holder of the office is Juan Felipe Herrera. Most people have never heard of Mr. Herrera — nor of most others who have held the office. This is no reflection on the quality of his poetry; it’s just that the post is, by nature, a retiring one.

    There are poets, however, who make a splash for one reason or another, and one of those is the poet, writer, and activist for women’s and civil rights, Maya Angelou (1928-2014). I daresay, if you asked some Americans to name a Poet Laureate, they might venture her name, though she’s never held the post.

    Why is this? Well, for one thing, she famously read one of her poems, “On the Pulse of Morning,” at the 1993 inauguration of President Bill Clinton. The last time this had happened was in 1961, when Robert Frost read “The Gift Outright” at President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration. Frost in fact had been Poet Laureate a few years earlier, 1958-1959.

    Born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, Angelou (an adopted name) had a childhood that knew, at various times, both comfort and hardship. In a bizarre series of events, she made accusations against a man who was then killed. Feeling responsible for what had happened, she stopped talking for almost five years. She said, “I thought, my voice killed him … And then I thought I would never speak again, because my voice would kill anyone ...”

    During this time, she read, she watched, she listened, and she developed the keen eye and ear that served her later as a poet and novelist.

    But first, she became a dancer and singer. After she started writing, she went to work in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, headed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She went to Africa as a reporter, and there befriended civil rights leader Malcolm X during a visit. X, and then King, were assassinated, and Angelou went into a deep depression.

    She came out of it by writing her first autobiography, entitled “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” Since it was published in 1969, it has not only been widely read, but is taught in schools.

    Vocabulary:

    Which word above means:

    1. unfavorable observation

    2. swearing in of an official

    3. very strange

    4. person who works for a political cause

    5. one who occupies a position

    6. killed for political reasons

    7. assume something to be true

    8. made friends with

    9. sharp; accurate

    10. shy