Rita Dove, Commonwealth Professor of English, has released the following statement on Maya Angelou's life and work:
Maya Angelou was indeed a phenomenal woman – rising from the ashes of a childhood that would have rendered many of us mute and enraged, she made her way in a world that all too often despised her kind – a black woman, tall, fierce, and most fearsome of all, unafraid.
All of this is chronicled in the six volumes of her landmark autobiography – most notably its first volume, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Now children read sections of it in school. As my grandmother would have said had she met her: "Girl, you done done something!”
I have encountered so many people for whom her poetry has been a balm and even a salvation: This is no mean feat, muttering critics aside. And though I would not count myself among the most ardent fans of her poetry, I admired her Inaugural recitation for President Clinton, On the Pulse of Morning, as a masterful exemplar of the occasional poem. It manages that most difficult trick: to be both simple and deep, appreciated by the person on the street upon first hearing, and yet containing riches upon closer, deeper reading – complex images, poignant litanies, a trajectory from the dinosaurs to the moment we were celebrating: a new President, a new era.
I first met Maya around 1990 when she came to speak in Charlottesville, where I teach at the University of Virginia. I managed to squeak past security to the green room a few minutes before her gig. I was uneasy, unsure of my reception: After all, I was part of a new generation of African-American poets, a “literary” aesthete in the eyes of many who had stamped out a space for Black literature in the sixties. Would she brand me a sell-out, a literary snob? I knocked on the doorjamb and announced myself; she turned the table, smiled, and enveloped me in an embrace.
Maya Angelou was a beacon to many – poets and artists of all kinds, those young protégées eager to make a mark, those older and perhaps already discouraged. Her autobiographical books were startling in their honesty but most importantly, also dazzling in their artistry: Here I am, they proclaimed; here we are, they whispered. Being an icon is often a lonely, thankless job: Envy and worship are two sides of the same ambivalent coin. But Maya wore the mantle with a dignity and joy that emboldened and enlivened those who knew her story: She understood the hunger for role models providing a window onto a world many had not been able to imagine. She did us proud.