The Poetry of Maya Angelou: A Study of the Blues Matrix as Force and Code

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THE POETRY OF MAYA ANGELOU: A STUDY OF THE BLUES MATRIX AS FORCE AND CODE

A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Kathy M. Essick Indiana University of Pennsylvania August 1994

1994 by Kathy M. Essick

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Indiana University of Pennsylvania The Graduate School Department of English

We hereby approve the dissertation of

Kathy M. Essick

Candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

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Dr. David Downing Professor of English, Advi

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-X/irwin Marcus Dr. Professor of History

Dr. Virginia L. Brown Associate Dean for Research The Graduate School and Research

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Title:

The Poetry of Maya Angelou: A Study of the Blues Matrix as Force and Code

Author: Kathy M. Essick Dissertation Chairman:

Dr. David Downing

Dissertation Committee Members:

Dr. Patrick Murphy Dr. Irwin Marcus

This literary study examines the poetry of Maya Angelou in terms of a blues matrix theory. Heretofore, Angelou's verse has been ignored and judged harshly by serious critics and scholars because dominant critical approaches have been inadequate to explain the complexity and artistry of African-American lyrical expression. Close reading and analysis of Angelou's poems show that specific strengths of the poet can be ascertained through a blues-oriented theoretical approach which allows the work to be evaluated in its own rhetorical perspective. The focus of the study is on specific structural and thematic parallels that can provide a frame of reference to ellucidate meaning. Chapter One provides a biographical sketch of Angelou and a review of previous criticism on her poetry. Chapter Two traces the development of African-American literary history and outlines the blues matrix theory posited by Houston A. Baker, Jr. Chapter Three examines specific structural parallels of Angelou's poems to the blues. Chapter Four discusses thematic parallels in

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Angelou's love poems, and Chapter Five examines poems that voice social concerns and protests. The results of the study reveal that a blues-based model provides a viable tool for analyzing a number of Angelou's poems. The blues matrix theoretical approach, however, has obvious limitations, for an examination of almost all of Angelou's poems reveals enormous variety in subject, style, theme, and use of vernacular elements. The study concludes that, while the blues model provides insights in the poems discussed here, a broader understanding of Angelou's poetry could be gained through a more comprehensive vernacular model that acknowledges other veins of the vernacular.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter

Page

ONE

AN INTRODUCTION....................................

TWO

BLUES THEORY AND AFRICAN-AMERICANLITERARY STUDY

1 28

THREE

BLUES-RELATED STRUCTURAL INFLUENCES..............

58

FOUR

THE BLUES OF LOVE.................................

78

FIVE

A VOICE OF PROTEST...............................

114

SIX

FINAL ASSESSMENTS.................................

136

NOTES....................................................

142

BIBLIOGRAPHY.............................................

152

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CHAPTER ONE AN INTRODUCTION I African-American writer Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson in 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri (note 1). As an adult Maya Angelou has become a noted autobiographer, hailed as one of the great voices of contemporary literature. Using her life as a testimony, Angelou stresses themes of survival, development, and actualization. Her works suggest that survival is controlled by the mind, not by societal or cultural influences, and that the individual is ultimately responsible for her mental and physical well-being. Angelou's individual quest for self-sustaining dignity and her message of personal struggle and survival operate as an inspiration to her readers. In addition, there is notable value in the critical social commentary that she provides as a voice contributing to the collective protest of African Americans who face social, political, and ecomonic injustices. Maya Angelou has published to date five volumes of poetry. As an autobiographer, Angelou has enjoyed much commercial and critical success. As a poet, however, she has not been as successful. Few articles concerning the poetry, and no book length works, have been published. Critical remarks about Angelou's verse are mixed, and, although many of her poems are autobiographical and comment on themes

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explored in her autobiographies, most critics have reserved their praise for her prose writings. Lynn Z. Bloom, writer for the Dictionary of Literary Biography, calls Angelou's first three volumes (to date at the time of the article) "of less stature" than her popular autobiographies (10). Bloom further claims that Angelou's "expressions . . . seldom rise above the banal. Her poems seem particularly derivative and cloying when expressed in conventional language" (11). Early criticism, especially, found Angelou's lyrical works to be inferior to the talents displayed in her autobiographies. A Library Journal (1971) review of her first volume of poetry, Just Give Me A Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie. calls her efforts "rather well done schlock poetry, not to be confused with poetry for people who read poetry" and concludes that "this collection isn't accomplished"

(Avant 3329) . However, another review by

Martha Liddy in Library Journal (1971) says that this volume has "marvelously lyrical, rhythmic poems" (3916). A Choice (1972) review ambivalently comments that the poems in this volume are "craftmanslike and powerful though not great poetry," noting that the most effective poems occur in the second section where "the will of a strong woman" speaks in bitter, angry tones (210). A Choice (1976) review of the second volume, Oh Pray My Winas Are Gonna Fit Me Well, finds praise for Angelou's use

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of vivid images and rhythms that "beg to be read aloud," but faults the poems in this collection for being "uneven, at times banal" (1439). Sandra Gilbert, who acknowledges Angelou as "a stunningly talented prose writer," views most of the poems in Oh Prav as "awkward or stilted . . . simply corny . . . too unself-conscious, too thoughtless"

(297) . In

her review essay for Poetry (1976), Gilbert expresses disappointment in Angelou, "one of the world's most exciting women," for writing "embarassing tangle[s]" in this volume (296) . Similarly, a reviewer for America calls this collection "an unfortunate example" of the dangers of success (103). The reviewer sees the major problem lying with the self-conscious public voice subsuming the private emotions (103). On the other hand, some reviewers commend Angelou's second volume. Kathryn Gibbs Harris, reviewer for Library Journal (1975), praises the poems in Oh Prav Mv Winers Are Gonna Fit Me Well, especially those similar to ballads. She also says the poems are most effective when read aloud (1829). A reviewer for Booklist (1975) sees the grouping of this volume as somewhat distracting, but comments positively on Angelou's poems that contain "streetwise soundings infused with pride and pain" (279). With many approving remarks, Mary Silva Cosgrave, a writer for Horn Book Magazine (1978), calls this volume "an eloquent collection of poems that sing out like the spirituals from the heart of the poet" (78). In the same

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manner, Keith Felton, reviewer for the Los Angeles Times, says, "How refreshing . . .

to turn to Maya Angelou, and

find her verse no tedium of ontos, but a stew of pungency, an admixture of emotions as varied and strong as that of other soul-food" (70). Mixed criticism continues with Angelou's third volume, And Still I Rise. Janet Boyar Blundell comments in a review for Library Journal (1978) that the poems that work best are those that have language resembling speech or song. Others get "mired in hackneyed metaphor and forced rhyme." Despite its unevenness the volume "succeeds as a statement of one black woman's experience, and of her determination not only to survive but to grow" (1640). A reviewer for Publisher's Weekly (1978) says of Angelou's third volume,

"hers is not a

major poetical voice; she seldom dazzles--or tries to--and at times her addiction to rhyme betrays her to banality" (87). R. B. Stepto offers perhaps the harshest criticism of Angelou's poems in his article essay, "The Phenomenal Woman and the Severed Daughter" in Parnassus: Poetry in Review (1979). Stepto calls Angelou's poems "woefully thin" and concludes that her verse lacks the "phenomenal woman" persona that gives power to her autobiographies (315). On the other hand, Mary Silva Cosgrave's review for Horn Book Magazine (1979) praises the poet's "zest and style" and her ability to find rhythm in everything in life. The reviewer

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says that Angelou "is not afraid to dream, to love, and to be brazenly, saucily, deeply herself" (97). In another commendatory critique of And Still I Rise, appearing in Booklist (1978), the reviewer says, "Maya sings in that great swinging melody that reveals her soul . . . she tells how she loves and how she lives and how she is a woman, and it is haunting" (147). Angelou's fourth volume, Shaker. Whv Don't You Sing?, received more positive reviews than did the earlier volumes. Candelaria Silva says in School Library Journal (1983) that these poems "are pared down with a sculptor's precision to simple yet elegant lines" and that Angelou's "perceptive vision is emphatic and clear . . . her rhymes never seem awkwardly constructed or contrived" (143). Similarly, Mary Silva Cosgrave in her Horn Book Magazine (1983) review calls this collection "a lyrical outpouring of seasoned feelings from the heart and mind," concluding that "Angelou is musical, rhythmical, and enchanting"

(336). Joyce Boyar

Blundell, however, reiterates her earlier opinion of Angelou's poetry; in another review for Library Journal (1983) she criticizes the volume's "'poetic' language and sing-song, school-girlish rhyme" (746), Ann Struthers, in her review of the last volume, I Shall Not Be Moved, generally praises the poet's efforts but also notes that Angelou's poetry, too reminiscent of Gwendolyn Brooks and sometimes too didactic, lacks the power

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of her autobiographies (B6). Hazel Rochman, in her review for Booklist (1990) , finds praise for only one of the poems in this volume ("Worker's Song"), viewing all the others as exceedingly inferior. Yet, Lenard D. Moore in Library Journal calls this volume an important new collection and says, "Angelou speaks eloquently of black life, unfolding a significant history in poems that are highly controlled and yet powerful . . . here, the language is precise and filled with imagery" (132). After examining the sparse critical commentary on her poetry, I believe that Angelou's verse is an overlooked area deserving of serious scholarly attention. I contend that Angelou's poetry has been ignored and judged unfairly because dominant Euro-American critical approaches have been inadequate to explain the complexity and artistry of African-American lyrical expression. What is needed is a theoretical approach that will reveal the strengths of Maya Angelou's poetry. The following study will examine some of the theories of Houston Baker, Jr., noted African-American literary critic and scholar and author of Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory (1984). I conclude that Baker's suppositions in this text are applicable and appropriate for an evaluation of Maya Angelou's poetry. Specifically, I apply Baker's concept of the "matrix as blues force" to Angelou's poetry to show

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evidence that the blues structure is both encoded in and an interpretive reflection of the vernacular culture. Baker's early view of black literature suggests that the "speaking" subject creates a language (a code). He later amends this position and argues for a decentered subject explaining that the language (a code) "speaks" the subject. This revised view, which moves the emphasis from high art to vernacular expression, provides a model for the study of African-American poetry and allows the critic to be more sensitive to the unique nature of this vein of American literature. Thus, Baker's theoretical bases offer a method of analysis to explain how African-American texts preserve and communicate culturally unique meanings. Baker sees the blues matrix acting as both code and force that significantly conditions the culture and the literature. According to Baker, all African-American expression is intertextually related to the figuration of the blues matrix that perpetually implies an "economics of slavery," and this network provides the enabling script for cultural explanation and artistic creation. Thus any signification in the culture and literature is derived from this code. (A detailed discussion of Baker's theory and of the blues as an art form will be provided in Chapter Two.) Maya Angelou's poetry presents one example to support Baker's conjectures about the blues figuration inscribed in African-American expression. Although the blues defies narrow or concrete

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definition, various recurrences in Angelou's works provide evidence of a discernible pattern. The present study will outline and analyze the most pervasive and significant regularities in Angelou's five volumes of poetry. Through this evaluation of Maya Angelou's poetry, we can ascertain strengths that demonstrate the poet's talent as an expressive African-American artist. II In my reading of Angelou's poetry, I find that she accurately presents important aspects of African-American life, and that her poetry reveals the depth and insight seen in her acclaimed autobiographies. Themes evident in Angelou's prose writings appear also in her poetry. Most notable are those dealing with struggles, triumphs, and cultural heritage. Themes of self-identity and self-affirmation can also be seen many of the poems. Angelou admits that in all of her writing she is "interested in . . . survival. But not just plodding survival. Survival with some style, with faith" (Weller 14). Angelou's verse style can be characterized by musical language indicative of her Southern African-American heritage. The poetry resembles the blues in style and content, and through the power of sound, Angelou's poetry appears to serve as a means for catharsis for the poet and likewise for the reader. Because her expressions often

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contain strong jazz and blues rhythms with a heavy dependence on rhyme, a number of Angelou's poems are easily adapted to drama or song. Angelou is well-known for her stage creations in which she produces dramatic and musical renderings of her poems. In fact, Angelou wrote, produced and directed a musical based on one of her volumes of poetry. Moreover, artists such as Roberta Flack and B.B. King have included Angelou's lyrics in their recordings. In many instances Angelou's poetry is autobiographical, and at the same time the "I" persona of her verses operates as a representative of her entire race. Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971), Angelou's first collection, has two parts: one deals with gentle emotions and the other is militant in tone. "Part One: Where Love Is a Scream of Anguish" contains

poems that have as their

subject love and the loneliness and especially lost love, brings.

anguish that love,

In "Part Two: Just Before the

World Ends," Angelou uses her verse as a vehicle to voice personal emotions of anger and rage to protest the racial oppression and social problems that have plagued many African Americans. Even though Angelou makes sharp attacks on political and social racism, she conveys a personal understanding of her subjects, especially in her poems about love. Oh. Prav Mv Wings are Gonna Fit Me Well (1975) contains five parts and reveals several themes including personal

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struggle, cultural heritage, love, and social problems. Angelou's voice resounds the personal values she asserts in the autobiographies. The title of this volume comes from an African-American spiritual, the tune of which originally comes from a slave hollar, the words from a nineteenthcentury spiritual: Oh pray my wings are gonna fit me well. I'm a lay down this heavy load. I tried them on the gates of hell. I'm a lay down this heavy load. (Tate 10) Angelou told Claudia Tate in an interview in 1983 that she planned to include things that troubled her (or her "heavy load") in this book of poetry and "let them pass" (Tate 10). The third volume, And Still I Rise (1978), reaffirms the strength of the poet and her fellow African Americans, and this volume is most similar in themes to the autobiographies -- notably themes of self-identity and self-affirmation for survival. Angelou reveals that the title poem of this volume refers to the "indomitable spirit of black people"

(Tate 10). This assertion of dignity serves

as a theme of many of the poems in this collection. I find that this volume shows Angelou's strongest talent as a poet. Abundant in lyrical qualities, many of the thiry-two poems in this collection are included in Angelou's musical also titled And Still I Rise. The language contains a constant

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degree of realism with rich physical descriptions. With simple diction that is easily read, Angelou produces honesty, warmth, humor, and even didacticism. The lyrical language accurately captures the dialect of African Americans as Angelou challenges the reader to stop and think about life and its obstacles. The resounding message is that one can rise above them. The last of the three parts in this volume makes a powerful statement on the importance of religion in Angelou's life and its role in both shaping her identity and providing her with strength to face her life, no matter how difficult it may be. Shaker. Whv Don't You Sincr (1983) treats contemporary concerns of Americans in one untitled section of twenty-eight poems. What is striking about this volume is the immense pride expressed by the poet--pride in being black, pride in being a woman, and pride in being free. In this volume, there is a definite emphasis on the blues in both style and theme. With deliberate musical rhythms and rhyme, Angelou writes about subjects such as love, loneliness, racism, family, and the blues. Recounting some of her personal experiences, Angelou explores her need to develop human relationships in order to thrive. In addition, there are also poems that probe political and social issues, (note 2). The last volume to date, I Shall Mot Be Moved (1990), captures the struggles of people to be free. With precise

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control of the verse, Angelou continues to stress her faith in the strength of herself and of her people. In this way she transcends the apparent limitations of her life. By examining all five volumes of the poetry as one entity, we can see Angelou's progression towards intellectual and psychological power. Ill Although this study will be about Maya Angelou's poetry, it may be helpful to discuss the autobiographies for which she has gained most of her critical recognition. Angelou's autobiographies form a frame of reference for her poetry, and parallels to the poetry can be drawn in terms of subject, theme, and autobiographical voice. Autobiography is discovering the self and the self's depth. Angelou told Sheila Weller in an interview for Intellectual Digest that autobiography is "a question of probing yourself so deeply and then admitting what you find" (14). Through the conscious writing of one's experience, one is able to understand and gain a degree of control of the experience —

to triumph in the battle of dealing with the

past in spite of the pain that may be.involved. Thus, the genre of autobiography has provided a useful medium for Angelou in her exploration of the self and her search for identity and self-acceptance. Through her search she recognizes her self-worth and her inner strength. By

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examining inward, Angelou discovers the power of her intelligence, which aids in the liberation of herself from external oppressors. Her message stresses that one must realize that negative experience contributes to the creation of the integral person. Instead of denying her past, Angelou confronts her memories and focuses on how her experiences have shaped her behavior and personality as well as her intellectual growth and self-understanding. In doing this she survives with style and faith, an admitted goal of hers (Weller 14). The overall effect of the autobiographies reveals the author's incredible ability to assert and maintain a sense of self-worth in the face of dire circumstances. It is the character's response to her plight that shapes her identity, rather than the racist system itself. Throughout the autobiographies Angelou reveals the Maya character (note 3) emerging as the epitome of strength, refusing to allow such harsh experiences to prevent her from becoming successful. Angelou's message in the autobiographies provides readers an optimistic view of life —

that one does have control of

one's destiny. She told Claudia Tate in an interview that all her work "is meant to say, 'You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.' In fact, the encountering may be the very experience which creates the vitality and the power to endure" (7). This inspiring message is what first attracted me to Angelou's

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autobiographies. A number of critical works are available on the autobiographies; the foremost and most comprehensive is Dolly McPherson's Order Out of Chaos. McPherson identifies Angelou's narrative talent, in particular, her marked control of the language. McPherson also delineates other strengths of Angelou's: her rich portraits of people and different environments; her use of self-mockery and humor; and the clarity of her writing. Order Out of Chaos traces the development of the Maya character through all five works. McPherson asserts that Angelou begins in chaos but finds the order she needs after her extended trip to Africa, which is recorded in the last volume. Using a typical pattern in African-American autobiography, Angelou's collective story presents a journey that shapes the identity of the self. The development of the self in Angelou's works results in a return to home to bring her full circle to complete awareness of her identity. McPherson concludes that Angelou finds order and meaning in her life through her experiences of searching for an identity. Her experiences with her family, community, and the world represent significant stages of growth and maturation. The overall theme of the five volumes of autobiography involves the author's reconciliation with life's difficulties in order to cope with the immediate environment and restore a wholeness

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to the interior self. Although Angelou writes from the perspective of an African-American woman, issues of gender and race are superceded by the commonalities of the human condition. Other notable critics such as Stephen Butterfield, Joanne Braxton, Selwyn Cudjoe, Keneth Kinnamon, Sondra 0'Neale, Sidonie Smith and George Kent have dealt with Angelou's autobiographies and with her place in the genre of African American autobiography (note 4). There have been fifteen dissertations written, three that deal with Angelou exclusively, and twelve that deal with Angelou and other writers, all of which deal with the autobiographies (note 5) . I Know Whv the Caged Bird Sings, the first autobiography, captures the experience of a black girl growing up in the deep South in the 1930's and 1940's. Caged Bird begins when at age three Marguerite Johnson's parents divorce, and she and her brother live for four years with their paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas, amidst a social climate where they face poverty and racial prejudice, segregation, and terrorizing by the Ku Klux Klan. When she is seven, Marguerite moves to St. Louis to live with her mother for a year where at age eight she suffers the harshest injustice of all -- rape by her mother's boyfriend. Through this painful incident (painful for the reader as well as the writer), Angelou does not convey a message of

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despair. She includes such incidents as the Klan encounter and the rape to illustrate her refusal to allow abject adversities to crush her spirit. At twelve she goes to San Francisco with her mother where she encounters more racism, but with determination she becomes the first black female fare collector with the San Francisco Streetcar Company. At age sixteen, Marguerite Johnson gives birth to her son, Guy. Angelou concludes the first autobiography with this event to emphasize that although she acknowledges that she must face adversity throughout life, she has confidence that she can control her life and take responsibility for her son's life through her own intellect and inner strength. The narrative voice of Caaed Bird continues in the four subsequent autobiographies. While Caaed Bird is generally considered by far the best of Angelou's works, scholars such as Dolly McPherson note that each volume makes an important contribution to the entire Angelou autobiography. In Gather Together in Mv Name (1974) the Maya character, age 17-19 and during the early 1950's, is less admirable than her earlier depiction in Caaed Bird. As a young adult with a child who solely relies on her, she makes a number of mistakes including her involvement with drugs and prostitution. Although most readers agree that the Maya character is less formidable in this second volume, Dolly McPherson sees Gather Together as artistically more mature, revealing the

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author's increased intellectual and emotional awareness. She contends that in Caaed Bird Angelou is experimenting with her writing style while at the same time she is attempting to establish self-identity. According to McPherson, in Gather Together the artist is more experienced and has reached self-realization, and as a result, her style in this work, "more telegraphic and condensed," shows a sharper control of word images that provide insights into the meaning of the work as well as into the unconscious motivations of the author (60).

Another specific strength

of this work is seen in its accurate depiction of the horrors of racism. In spite of the irrational hate in racism, the formidable Maya continues to face her conflicts without surrender. Angelou's third autobiography, Sinain' and Swinain' and Gettin' Merrv Like Christmas (1976), examines the years 1949-1955 and follows Angelou's career as a singer and dancer. This work asserts that Angelou is able to live with her past as she strives to adapt to her environment to ensure continued growth and personal self-worth. Of special importance in this volume is Angelou's re-examination of her attitude about whites, which resulted in her adult acceptance and tolerance of other races. The emergence of Angelou as a successful entertainer reaffirms the initial theme of survival presented in Caaed Bird. Even though Angelou still faces problems during the years covered in

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this volume, especially poverty and the difficulties of being a single parent, she not only survives, but also experiences years of joy (hence the title) . Angelou continues to demonstrate her talent as a prose writer in The Heart of a Woman (1981), her fourth autobiography. This volume records major events of Angelou's life from 1957-1963 and shows her introduction to the world of black artists and writers, her involvement with civil rights in the United States, her marriage to a South African freedom fighter, and her life in New York, London, and Cairo. Through a myriad of challenging conflicts, Maya's inner strength and sense of survival propel her to a number of accomplishments. The strong, confident, adaptable protaganist continues to testify to the power and dignity of the individual. Personal and public conflicts unfold to suggest that the author's life continues to offer a testament of incredible strength. In addition, Angelou's artistic achievements in this volume include her rich physical descriptions and her ability to draw clearly recognizable portraits of characters such as Billie Holiday, Malcolm X, and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The last of the autobiographies to date, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, recounts the author's life in the early 1960's. It focuses on Angelou's search for identity in Africa. After living in Ghana for several years,

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Angelou returned to the United States, which she concludes is her true home. The experience of the journey to Africa and back to the United States results in an enlightenment that contradicts her earlier romantic view of Africa and black people. She realizes that the same undesirable characteristics, especially insensitivity and racism that she has witnessed in white people in the United States, exist also in Africans. She returns feeling that although she loves and respects her heritage in Africa, cultural restraints prevent her from having the identity she desires as an African. She is an African American, and though she struggles with what W.E.B. DuBois termed "double consciousness," she can have a sense of belonging only in the United States, her birth home. The writing of the experience in the autobiography marks the author's awareness of this transformation in her self-understanding. McPherson views this last work as the apex that all the other autobiographies strive toward. Autobiography records both the time and the author's place in it. African-American autobiographies traditionally are extremely personal while there is an important public aspect to some of them as well. Consider for instance the works of Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, and Malcolm X. From the slave narratives to the present, autobiography has emerged as the literary genre that best captures the African-American experience. Angelou attempts to provide

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accurate information not only from a personal perspective but also as a public spokesperson for African Americans and Africans as well. In addition to the message of survival, the autobiographies have value in their pointed social commentary. In particular, Angelou's voice provides evidence of the African American's struggle within a white-dominated society. She reveals some of the harsh truths about black southern life that often have been misunderstood by outsiders. Angelou's initial purpose in writing her story was to reveal what it is to be black and female in the United States, and indeed, as a spokesperson, she succeeds. In this way her autobiographical statement serves as a means to clarify the African American's point of view, which has historically been misunderstood or omitted from the mainstream discourse. IV Clearly, Maya Angelou's adult life boasts an impressive catalogue of accomplishments which best corroborates her philosophy that the human spirit endeavors to survive despite adversity. Angelou's commercial writing success has come primarily from her first autobiography, I Know Why the Caaed Bird Sinas. a book which has been through twenty-four hardback printings, twenty-one paperback, as well as two special editions for the Book of the Month Club and the Ebony Book

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Club. Considered a contemporary classic, the autobiography received immediate critical praise. Reviewers from the New York Times. Saturday Review. Newsweek. and Library Journal praised Angelou's talents as a writer and cited her strengths in the use of language, style, and theme. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt of the New York Times (February 25, 1970) called Caaed Bird "a carefully wrought, simultaneously touching and comic memoir . . . [whose] beauty is not in the story but in the telling" (45) . Robert A. Gross commented on Caaed Bird in Newsweek (March 2, 1970) and praised the autobiography's "rich, dazzling images," and lauded it as much more than "a tour de force of language” because the book "pays tribute to the courage, dignity, and endurance of [a] small rural Southern black community" (3). Caaed Bird chronicles Maya Angelou's life from age three to seventeen. The misfortunes of the author's life accounted in this first autobiography juxtaposed to the later successes in her life testify to Angelou's message of the importance of drawing on inner strength to overpower outward oppressions. Despite the difficult, sometimes tragic, childhood that the first autobiography chronicles, Maya Angelou's adult life has seen a worldly list of accomplishments and successes as an artist. Consequently, her numerous achievements in the area of writing, as well as in other artistic and personal endeavors, alert one to the strength and depth of her own determination.

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Maya Angelou's list of achievements is long and varied. As a teenager she studied dance in San Francisco where she became a nightclub performer at the Purple Onion. Later she appeared at Mr. Kelly's in Chicago, and the Blue Angel, Village Vanguard, and Apollo theaters in New York City. During 1954 and 1955, as part of an all-black theater company sponsored by the United States State Department seeking to offset a growing distrust of the United States in foreign countries, Angelou sang and danced in Gershwin's musical Porcrv and Bess on a twenty-two country tour of Europe and Africa. These engagements allowed her to appear in famous opera houses from Paris to Cairo. While on the tour, she taught modern dance at the Rome Opera House and the Habimah Theater in Tel Aviv. In 1957 she recorded the album Miss Calvoso for Liberty Records and was featured in Columbia Pictures Calvoso Heat Wave. In 1960, in collaboration with Godfrey Cambridge, she wrote, produced, and performed in the revue, Cabaret to Freedom, a production organized to benefit Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, at New York's Village Gate. Another success on the stage at this time includes her lead appearance in the off-Broadway production of Jean Genet's all-black play, The Blacks. in 1961 at the St. Mark's Playhouse. This production later won the Obie Award. Interested in civil rights and willing to make her

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contribution, Angelou in 1960-1961 succeeded Bayard Rustin as the Northeastern Regional Coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Also in 1961, she went to London and Africa where she became unofficially involved with the African National Congress in South Africa. In Africa Angelou worked as associate editor for the Arab Observer. an English-language weekly, in Cairo, free-lance writer for the Ghanian Times. contributor for the Ghanian Broadcasting Company, and feature editor for the African Review. From 1963 to 1965, Angelou worked at the University of Ghana, Institute of African Studies in Legon-Accra, Ghana, as a teacher and assistant administrator in the School of Music and Drama. Also while in Ghana, Angelou appeared in Mother Courage at the University of Ghana. Angelou returned from Africa in 1965, and in 1966 she performed in a stage production of the Greek tragedy Medea by Jean Anouilh in Hollywood under the direction of Frank Silvera. In 1972 Angelou made her Broadway debut in Look Away, a two-character play in which Angelou played Mary Todd Lincoln's dressmaker; and although the play was not a success, she was nominated in the same year for a Tony Award for her performance in this play. In 1977 Angelou appeared in the opening scene of the television series of Alex Haley's Roots. and, for her portrayal of the grandmother of Kunte Kinte in this production, she was nominated for an acting Emmy. Angelou also played a significant role in the

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1993 ABC television movie, There Are No Children Here, based on the actual lives of desperate African-American children facing abject poverty and violence in a run-down Chicago hous ing pro jec t . In 1968 Angelou wrote Black. Blues. Black, a ten-part television series on African traditions in American life produced by National Educational Television. She has also participated as a guest interviewer for the Public Broadcasting System program Assignment America. In 1972, she wrote the original screenplay and musical score for Independent Cinerama's film Georgia. Georgia, which was the first original script to be produced by a black woman. In 1976 Angelou wrote two African-American television specials, The Legacy and The Inheritors. Since the publication of her first autobiography in 1970, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Angelou has published four subsequent autobiographies in 1974, 1976, 1981, and 1986 and five volumes of poetry in 1971, 1975, 1978, 1983, and 1990. In 1987 she published Now Sheba Sings The Song, a poem illustrated by distinguished artist Tom Feelings. In 1993 she published On the Pulse of Morning, a poem she composed for the 1992 inauguration ceremonies for President William Jefferson Clinton. Her other recent work, Wouldn't Take Nothing For Mv Journey Now (1993), consists of short vignettes that offer the author's wisdom about a variety of

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life's situations. In 1970 Maya Angelou was nominated for the National Book Award for I Know Why the Caaed Bird Sinas. and in 1972 she was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her first volume of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie. In 1977 she received the "Woman of the Year in Communications" award from Ladies Home Journal. In 1983 Angelou received the Matrix Award in the field of books from Women in Communications, Inc. In 1987 Angelou was honored with the North Carolina Award in Literature, the highest such award the state bestows. She has written a two-act play entitled The Least of These, an adaptation of Sophocles' Aiax. which premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in 1974. She received the Golden Eagle Award for her documentary for PBS in 1977, Afro-American in the Arts. Also for PBS, Angelou hosted a study course filmed in thirty half-hour segments, Humanities Through the Arts. In 1979 she wrote the television script and musical score for her most acclaimed work, I Know Why the Caaed Bird Sinas. which aired for CBS the same year. She also wrote the screenplay All Dav Long for the American Film Institute, and Sister. Sister, a teleplay for NBC that aired in 1982.

In 1992 Angelou wrote, produced and directed

an autobiographical musical entitled And Still I Rise, a revised version of her 1976 play, which was performed at the Ensemble Theater in Oakland, California. Maya Angelou has received over 30 honorary doctorates

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from schools such as Smith College, Mills College, and Kansas University. In addition, she received the Chubb Fellowship from Yale University in 1970. In that same year, Angelou worked as a writer-in-residence at Kansas University, and in 1975 Angelou studied in Italy as a Rockefeller scholar. She was appointed by President Gerald R. Ford to the American Revolution Bicentennial Advisory Council, and by President Jimmy Carter to the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year. In 1984 Angelou was named by North Carolina Governor James B. Hunt to the North Carolina Arts Council. At the request of President William Clinton, Angelou became the first poet since Robert Frost to compose and read a poem for a United States President's inauguration ceremonies.

The preceding list does not include all of Maya Angelou's accomplishments. Her awards and honors are numerous in every field she has attempted. Angelou is on the Board of Trustees of the American Film Institute and is one of the few women members of the Directors Guild. She has written many songs, some recorded by B.B. King and Roberta Flack. She has had numerous articles in publications such as Life. Cosmopolitan. Jet. Essence. Ebony. Ms.. Harper's Bazaar, and The New York Times. Some of her previously published poetry is featured in the 1993 film Poetic Justice starring Janet Jackson as a young African-American poet

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(Angelou also has a brief role as a family member at a reunion in this film). She has been honored as a distinguised visiting professor at Wake Forest University, Wichita State University, and California State University, Sacramento. Maya Angelou currently resides in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she has a lifetime appointment as the first Reynolds Professor and Chair of American Studies at Wake Forest University (note 6).

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CHAPTER TWO BLUES THEORY AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERARY STUDY

I For the theoretical basis of this study, I draw primarily on the work of noted African-American literary critic Houston A. Baker, Jr., especially The Journey Back: Issues in Black Literature (1980) and his latest volume addressing African-American literary theory, Blues. Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory (1984). In this later text Baker offers a framework for the study of American literature at its vernacular level. His major tenet asserts that the "blues voice" is infused in the American narrative and is particularly characteristic of African-American culture and expression. Throughout Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature Baker attempts to show cogent examples in narrative discourse that AfricanAmerican culture is a "complex, reflexive enterprise which finds its proper figuration in blues conceived as a matrix" (3). He focuses on the works of the following AfricanAmerican writers: Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Amiri Baraka, and Toni Morrison. Baker's work demonstrates that the blues matrix as a vernacular trope possesses enormous force for the study of literature, criticism, and culture. Instead of looking at AfricanAmerican literature in response to white society and white

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critical approaches, we can utilize Baker's theory and respond to African-American literature in its own rhetorical perspective. Therefore, I propose that Baker's framework provides an appropriate and useful tool for a scholarly examination of the poetry of Maya Angelou. In his earlier work, The Journey Back; Issues in Black Literature and Criticism (1980), Baker views the "speaking subject" as the creator of language (note 1). He sees the black narrative as an attempt to record culturally unique meanings, and he seeks to analyze cultural interpretation based on the language of the black writer in its original, richly symbolic and expressive context (note 2) (xi-xvii). Through this approach he sees the black subject adopting the language of the white cultural system in order to handle the chaos of victimization (22) . The black writers "write" themselves to freedom as they gain their personhood, aver their existence, and prove their intelligence through their literatures. Although the earliest written records of African-American writers such as Olaudah Equiano (Vassa), Jupiter Hammon and Phyllis Wheatley reflect the emergence of acculturation, Baker argues in Chapter One that there exists a tension in the works that allowed blacks to preserve some of their own expressive views of their experience . From Equiano's accounts of his early childhood, we find artistic, as well as anthropological, value in the accurate

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pictures of African dress, customs, and religion. Equiano's account of Ibo life and culture, one of the first descriptions of an African society by an African, is told in the first chapter of his autobiography (Equiano 7-14) . Jupiter Hammon's work, on the other hand, conspicuously comments from an Anglo-American perspective particular concerns about Christianity and its effect on American culture; however, it is apparent that he speaks exclusively about Christianity for the black American as a black voice speaking to a black audience. Much of his poetry and his last work, "Address to Negroes of the State of New York," propose that the slave accept both his enslavement and Christianity (Barksdale and Kinnamon 45-48). Wheatley's work, even though characterized by most critics as an imitation of the rigid neoclassicism of the time, makes frequent mention of her race, which may indicate a sense of racial pride that earlier readers did not recognize or acknowledge. I would even suggest that Wheatley may at times even affect satire as in the poetry of her principal model, Alexander Pope. Equiano, Hammon, and Wheatley, and other black artists and their works stood for symbols of the black race's inherent intelligence and talents as well as a source of pride for themselves and other blacks. In later African-American autobiographical works, black slaves and ex-slaves, such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet A Jacobs (Linda Brent), and William Wells Brown, record their

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experiences and, using the language of the white system, attempt to give written evidence of their personhood (Baker 31). Their narratives, as well as the narratives of other slaves and ex-slaves, attempted to arouse the moral conscience of those Americans who had the power to change the wretched conditions of African Americans affected by that "peculiar institution." These autobiographical acts employed a rhetoric that was powerful and effective in explaining basic abolitionist principles to those in the United States who held a false and sometimes even romantic view of a society of slaveholders. I see irony here that the slave could never communicate his or her actual experience through the language of the white system because once the experience was recorded through the linguistic codes, literary conventions, and audience expectations of the white system, the authentic voice of the slave was lost. As a result, the autobiographical act of the slave and ex-slave narrative appeared to become merely part of the public discourse for abolitionism (Baker 43). Thus, the authentic voice of the slave or ex-slave was subsumed by the white abolitionist rhetoric. In striving for personhood, the slave or ex-slave lost what he or she was reaching for. Consider, for example, a case in point. In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Doucrlass. An American Slave. Douglass presents a powerful rhetoric in his attempt

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to expose the cruelties of slavery, and the work served as a successful polemical discourse in the Abolitionist Movement (note 3); however, as we can see when we compare this work with his later autobiography, there was much change in the voice of Douglass, but the vernacular African-American voice is lost in both. The Narrative. Douglass's first work, was shaped by abolitionists who cautioned Douglass against using language and style which readers might find incongruent with the writing skills of an uneducated slave. In his second autobiography, Mv Bondage and Mv Freedom. Douglass uses a different voice that indicates that he did not have the same linguistic constraints as he had with the Narrative.

However, he faced even more strident constraints in writing Bondage. In the second autobiography, Douglass no longer has to establish himself as an authentic slave capable only of simple expressions, and he becomes more literary and uses more allusions, figurative language, ironies and images and other narrative techniques expected by his reading audience. What some would see as growth in Douglass as a writer from Narrative to Bondage merely represents different linquistic constraints shaped this time by preconceived white expectations for written discourse. Because white critics were not sensitive to an artistic skill conveyed through the vernacular, Douglass was forced to employ the language of the white elite in his work in order to insure commercial and critical success. Thus, in Bondage Douglass's authentic

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voice is again subsumed, this time by traditional white literary techniques that would boost his career as a writer and entreprenuer (note 4). Baker notes that even in later African-American autobiographies, such as Booker

T.

Washington's

Up

From

Slavery, the truth was disguised by constraints that forced such writers to omit evidence that did not agree with the existing "American Dream" idea of prosperity through hard work and property ownership (46-49) . With his accommodationist ideology, Washington won favor with white audiences who welcomed his less than accurate assertions that blacks would adjust to second-class citizenship and accept injustices such as the separation of the races, lack of political rights, and limited educational opportunities which offered only industrial training (note 5). Washington's simplistic style and didactic tone mirrored that of white separatists who spoke and wrote with a condescending rhetoric. Dissident black intellectuals of the early 1900's who sought to gain social equality, such as W.E.B. DuBois, responded to Washington's fallacies in vitriolic essays and articles that called for desegregation, increased political rights, and higher education (note 6). However, white-controlled publishing companies propagated Washington's success while they ignored the criticisms of DuBois and others who challenged Washington. DuBois's The

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Souls of Black Folk, for example, contains many eloquent, original expressions, most notably his articulation of "double consciousness" in African Americans, yet some of DuBois's white and African-American readers rejected the work because of his bitter attack on Washington's philosophy of separatism, social passivism, and conciliation. In the 1920's a heightened feeling of racial identity and solidarity resulted in the intelligentsia's shift from the rural South to large urban areas. This shift culminated in the rise of the Harlem Renaissance. This literary movement, characterized by racial assertiveness and expressiveness, enabled blacks to record their experiences and insights in distinctive forms designed for a black audience (note 7). With active resistance to white hegemony, the black writer preserved unique meanings in the black semantic domain and seized language as a weapon of liberation in a much truer sense than that of the slave narrator (Baker 53). Blackness, perhaps more than ever before, connoted a celebrated racial strength and pride. In addition, Black writers of the Harlem Renaissance employed distinctive literary strategies that yielded unique discursive structures.

Claude McKay, for example, employed West Indian elements in his work that expressed his distinct concept of what it means to belong to the African race of Negroes. In Banana Bottom McKay's most well-developed character, Bita,

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like McKay himself, asserts and affirms her "blackness" over the white culture in which she lived and traveled most of her young life. Even though she was raised in a white home with benefactors who attempted to impose their white middle-class values on her, as an adult Bita recognizes her affinity with black folkness. The novel concludes as she reaches the apex of her self-understanding--that her identity is with blackness. Jean Toomer, in his work Cane, experimented with a new genre to capture the myriad complexities of the black experience. Cane, a novel composed of poems, short sketches, and a drama in Toomer's subtle but distinctive speech, attempts to record the cultural experience of both the southern and northern black (note 8). And Langston Hughes, the first commercially successful African-American poet, used colloquial language and rhythms appropriate to his subject matter in poems expressing racial heritage, strength and political protest (note 9). Similarly, many black writers of the 1940's and 1950's, particularly James Baldwin, responded by asserting that existing structures were inadequate because they were distortions created by American falsehoods (Baker 60-61). For example, slavery had been justified by Christianity and materialism. James Baldwin saw through white American illusions, and because of continued segregation and oppression, riots, lynchings, and assassinations, he had a

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less optimistic view of social equality than did his earlier counterparts (note 10). Baldwin argued that black writers could not accept the meaningless language that white society had allowed for public discourse of ethnic issues (Baker 60). He also contended that the black artists must become intellectual rebels to break down the white, Western values that encouraged cohesiveness and complacency of blacks in the white world (Baker 61-2). Richard Wright, on the other hand, saw white American rationalism, or reason in secular terms, as an alternative to the irrational paganism of Africa; thus, he advocated the adoption of Westernism by blacks as a means to unite the world by a common rational bond (Baker 63). Wright's "Integrationist Poetics" was the result of the 1954 Supreme Court decision in the case of "Brown vs the Board of Education" which held that "separate but equal" public schools were inherently unequal. Wright predicted a future America that would indeed be equal in all ways, including expressive art forms. He further believed that the black writer should conform to the standards of white writers and abandon her distinctive African-American forms of expression (note 11). Moreover, he saw the black artist's role as assimilator so that black literature could merge into the larger mainstream (Baker 63-68). Wright's most well-known work, Native Son, demonstrates that an artistic work modeled by white codes of rhetoric could act as effective social

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protest. A number of parallels suggest that Wright modeled Native Son after Theodore Dreiser's An American Tracredv. Ralph Ellison's views seem to reconcile those of Baldwin and Wright. To him, the black artist's role is to function as a mediator between his experiences and his traditions or culture. To Ellison the vernacular or folkloric realm of cultural expression must be equated with high art in order to communicate significant meanings, and only by constructing a new artistic and social paradigm could the black writer alter existing oppressive ideologies. Ellison's theory calls for a pluralistic synthesis of the oral traditions of black culture and the literary traditions of both black and white predecessors. As a result, Ellison's prescription conjoins American Romanticism, African-American folk culture, and modern aesthetics into a vernacular modernism (Baker 68-71) . In Shadow and Act. a collection of autobiographical essays that assert his critical theory of pluralism, Ellison delineates the complex relationship between black folk culture, especially musical expression, and the mainstream American culture. In "Blues People," an essay in which he opposes the ideology of LeRoi Jones in his book Blues People. Ellison argues that: From the days of their introduction into the colonies, Negroes have taken, with the ruthlessness of those without articulate

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investments in cultural styles, whatever they could of European music, making of it that which would, when blended with the cultural tendencies inherited from Africa, express their own sense of life--while rejecting the rest . . . and it was the African's origin in cultures in which art was highly functional which gave him an edge in shaping the music and dance of this nation. (248) In Ellison's most noted work, Invisible Man. the writer balances folk and artistic energies through an unnamed protagonist who as an artist masters his potential as a writer and who as a member of African-American culture can utilize the strengths of his vernacular heritage, particularly jazz and blues rhythms. Invisible Man. therefore, records specifics about the African-American cultural experience through artistic media that fix Ellison's political ideologies in the mainstream canon of American writers and critics. The black writers of the 1960's and 1970's, most notably Imamu Amiri Baraka, born LeRoi Jones (note 12), endorsed separatism as a means to raise African-American consciousness (Baker 81). They saw the homogeneity between African-American expression and white mainstream as reason for despair not optimism as Wright had envisioned. Baraka proposed a "new nation" of blacks to propel values antithetical to those of white dominance. Baraka based his

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concept of black American nationalism on three ideas: race, nation, and culture (Baker 97). His proposed new sovereign state of black nationalists would isolate the limiting norms of white middle-class life and art in the Unites States and use as its source only the culturally distinctive elements of black American folk life and literature, particularly music forms such as jazz and blues, for artistic expression. In this way black American literature could accurately reflect the values and sensibilities of black Americans, even of the lowest classes of black Americans. Baraka and other black writers of this period, such as Gwendolyn Brooks and James Baldwin (note 13), addressed black audiences in a rebellious attempt to bond all blacks in a common understanding of black cultural nationalism and to propel social and political revolution (Baker 108-113). A major goal of this era was a redefinition of black writing and of the role of the black writer. This movement, which became known as the "Black Aesthetic Movement" called for literary-critical investigation which would recognize a distinctive code for creating and evaluating black art. The movement fell short in that it offered no concrete plan of action. Definitive boundaries of "race" were difficult to identify because a plethora of views about "race"— based on physical characteristics (mainly skin pigmentation and hair), common ancestry, geographical location, shared

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hermeneutical principles and political beliefs, linquistic characteristics, even intelligence and moral characteristics— existed and prevented any clear understanding of racial classifications.

Also, an assertion

of "race" assumed a naturalness of "racial" feeling and an appreciable maintainance of "racial" boundaries, both of which could not be proven to exist.

Oftentimes the

movement's stance and goals were misunderstood; consequently, its proponents inadvertently perpetuated false views that reinforced exisitng negative sterotypes. In The Journey Back. Baker sees existing black and white approaches to the black literary text as inadequate (144-153). He calls for a structural approach that presumes the force of complex ordering principles that can be understood through linguistic analysis (162) . His approach attempts to reveal some of the underlying conventions or codes of African-American literature and culture. For such analysis to be successful, extensive knowledge of the cultural discourse is necessary as well as an awareness of the semantic levels of the culture (163). He concludes The iTournev Back by saying that works of art must be examined by a number of intellectual disciplines, and the critical challenge is to discover methods and models to explore the interrelation of art and culture (165-6).

In Blues. Ideology, and Afro-American Literature; A Vernacular Theory. Baker refutes his earlier view of the

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"speaking subject" creating a language (note 14) . In this new view Baker sees the language (the code)

(note 15)

"speaking" the subjectconsequently, the subject is decentered, and value is shifted from high art to vernacular expression. After consideration of the dual meanings of the term "vernacular": "a slave born on his master's estate" and "art native or peculiar to a particular country or locale," Baker draws new conclusions about African-American literary artistry. This later text asserts two main postulates: 1) that the material and economic conditions of slavery resulted in ideologies that foreground all expression; and 2) that the characteristic rhythm of blues results in a matrix of force (note 16) and code: a network that operates as an enabling script for African-American cultural discourse (1-6). The present study will primarily employ the latter of these observations-- Baker's concept of a blues matrix as force and code— in an analysis of the poetry of Maya Angelou. Baker's theoretical approach will provide an appropriate tool to refute the sparse and inaccurate critical recognition of Maya Angelou's poetry by allowing judgments to be made based on culturally specific expressions.

Baker grounds his new approach of critical analysis of African-American literary works in the power of the vernacular language. Vernacular here emphasizes the root

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meaning of "verna": a slave born in his master's house; a native of uncertain origin. Baker argues that the language and creativity of the slave have been conditioned by an "economics of slavery" (note 17) (3), which produced governing statements (note 18) that form discourse; the primary governing statement in the case of the slave is "commercial deportation" (24). Different from the "white American history" governing statements that signal a "religious man" on a "migratory errand" with God's blessings to the "wilderness" where his "increase in store" will be proof that he has reached the promised "New Jerusalem" (17-19), "commercial deportation" denotes the involuntary transport of human beings for economic profit. Looking at the language, literature, and culture of African Americans from this new, economic perspective (instead of the traditional humanistic one) shifts the perspective on "American literary history" (24) . Also, with African-American discourse grounded in concrete, material situations, of particular importance are the places where African Americans have lived. W.E.B. DuBois in The Souls of Black Folk describes the one- or two-room cabin home of many African Americans in the South at the turn of the century:

It is nearly always old and bare, built of rough boards, and neither plastered nor ceiled. Light and ventilation are supplied by a single door and by the square in the wall with its wooden shutter.

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There is no glass, porch, or ornamentation without . . . Above all, the cabins are crowded . . . one may find families of eight and ten occupying one or two rooms.

(159)

Baker argues that such buildings aptly signify the economic conditions of their inhabitants. Moreover, these dwellings are the birthplace of many of the blues (Baker 28-31). Baker explains that African-American culture has been conditioned by a blues matrix which exists as the "always already," to draw on Jacques Derrida's term suggesting the always present antecedent to any linquistic act (Blues Ideology 4-5). Even though definite origins of the vernacular song are obscure and undocumented, it is agreed that their beginning authorship is entirely AfricanAmerican. These songs employ an enabling script derived from a complex network of blues energies that reflect hundreds of years and thousands of miles of African-American experience. In order for literary critics to understand the complex, reflexive nature of the blues as both codifier and force, a refiguration of traditional American literary history must be made to include the effects of alternate governing statements such as "commercial deportation." Also, the blues matrix as a forceful, productive network must be recognized as applicable to African-American literary efforts. In this way works that have heretofore been

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categorized as lacking in artistic creativity can now be seen as unique expressions of African-American experience, rather than mere imitations (and thus judged poorly) of the white mainstream aesthetic.

II Although there is no concrete definition of the blues and few absolute features, a number of regularities exist to form a discernible pattern that can serve as the basis of analysis. The blues form is aural and tends to take shape and style during performance. The simple and singular form of the blues often consists of three chords with three lines of lyrics in a 12-bar sequence with a call and response pattern derived from African music. This twelve-bar pattern followed with a fixed chord sequence became a standard in many blues songs (note 19). In Shadow and Act Ralph Ellison delineates the blues as: An impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one's aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, . near-comic lyricism. (90) Generally, "blues" connotes a state of mind involving a sense of melancholy or despair, and much of the secular form

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of African-American folk music know as "The Blues" has as its theme or subject feelings of being "blue." Abbe Niles in "The Story of the Blues," a prefatory essay to W.C. Handy's Blues: An Anthology, contends that there is no doubt that the name "blues" was bestowed on the songs because of the mood of the verses (14). Subjects in African-American art forms, and in particular the blues music form, are often reflecting on the unhappiness that people inevitably must face in life. These woes, ranging from life's minor irritations to actual tragedies and miseries, are expressed through blues vocalization; and through song, the blues singer can control and release some of the emotions that appear to be self-defeating--disappointments, frustrations, anxieties, regrets, and resignations. Despite the lyrics, the underlying philosophy in blues songs proposes that the singers use laughter instead of tears to cope with their troubles. Some African traditions held that the sunsum (soul) could be hurt or sick and consequently make the body sick. Music was used as a means for psychological release to prevent any bodily illness as a result of a damaged sunsum (Levine 9). William Bosman, a Dutch traveler who lived in Africa from 1688 to 1702, described music celebrations for this purpose that he witnessed on the Gold Coast. English anthropologist R.S. Rattray similarly reported that the

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Ashanti freely chanted their otherwise repressed emotions in songlike renditions. As an Ashanti high priest explained to Rat trey, ’’Everyone has a sunsum (soul) that may get hurt or knocked about or become sick, and so make the body ill." Verbal art such as singing has been utilized for the purpose of relieving the sunsum by not only the Ashanti, but also the Dahomeans, Chopi, Ibo, Ewe, Yoruba, Jukun, Bashi, Tiv, Hausa, and other African peoples (Levine 9-11) . Similiarly, songs afforded early African-American slaves a means to release negative energies. The Middle Passage did not completely erase traditional aspects of African culture, and many slaves incorporated musical styles from their African homeland into the verbal art that came to be known as the slave song. In early antebellum songs, (blues as well as spirituals and other forms) the singers expressed themselves communally and individually in expressive modes that not only gave the singers immense aesthetic pleasure, but also preserved traditions and prevented the erosion of values. In addition, these songs allowed the slaves to symbolically transcend their immediate condition and afforded them channels of communication which could not be understood by white slave owners or overseers. (note 20). Abbe Niles explains that early blues originated as an expression of one singer's feelings, often complete in a single verse (Handy 12). A simple form, encouraging

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improvisation, might take the popular form of this early 1900's song: Gwine take morphine an' die Gwine take morphine an' die Gwine take morphine an' die. (12)

Niles also provides examples of blues that offer shrewd commentary in epigrammatic form: If yo' house ketch fire, an' dey ain't no water round, If yo' house ketch fire, an' dey ain't no water round, Throw yo' trunk out de window, an' let de shack buhn down. and, Ketch two women runnin' togedder long, Ketch two women runnin' togedder long. You can bet yo' life dere's somethin' gwine wrong. (13)

Sometimes the spirit of the blues is ridicule. In the following example a "monkey man" means a West' Indian: Dey's two kind of people in dis worl,' dat I can't stan,' Dey's two kind of people in dis worl,' dat I can't stan,' An' dat's a two-faced woman, an' a monkey man.

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(13)

Many of the lyrics express a desire to travel or escape as seen in this simple song to the tune of Joe Turner (note 21) :

Gwine

downde river befo' long,

Gwine

down de river befo' long,

Gwine

downde river befo' long. (13)

Samuel Charters

notesin TheBlues Makers

that the verse

form of the blues employs the English elements of a loose pentamemter rhythm, but the pattern of two repeated lines and a final rhyming line is unique to the blues (16). Blues singers often offer their own definitions of the blues and of what may cause the blues. Little Eddie Kirkland tells of what makes him blue: "Unlucky in love for one, and hard to make a success is two" (qtd. in Evans 17). Reverend Rubin Lacy, former blues singer, says the blues is a worried mind. It boils down to worry. Sometimes you worry so, it cause you to jump off the Frisco bridge up here, worry so it cause you to stick a gun in you . . . That's all, it's worry. Some folks say, 'Well, he went out of his head.' Well, if worry cause you to go out of your head, that's what it is. But that's the blues, (qtd. in Evans 18)

J.B. Lenoir says "the blues is sprung up from trouble and heartache, being bound and down, want a release" (qtd. in

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Evans 18). The original songs of a people conditioned by slavery and oppression, the blues creates a sombre effect as it comments on themes of love, hate, loss, heartbreak, success, and failure. The blues are dominated by the singer's own feelings of "self," but instead of having a personalized form, the blues speaker acts as a representative voice for all those who share similar experiences. At the same time the voice is anonymous. Using a wide variety of topics and styles, the singer's expressions may be of a personal lament or a more generalized song of protest. The blues often celebrate the joys and frustrations associated with love (Evans 28). The most prominent topic of the blues is the man/woman relationship because this is the area most subject to change and fluctuation in people's lives (29) . Expressions are often boldly frank, often with rich sexual imagery. Charles Keil notes that blues about sex, a dominant theme, abound with lyrics built around double entendres such as "It's Tight Like That," "Let Me Roll Your Lemon," and "Ah Wants To Sell My Monkey" (71). Cathartic expressions similar to the fatalism found in white love songs are often used, yet the blues do not contain the self-pity found in many songs of white culture. Characteristics of other forms of black music such as field hollers and spirituals are evident in the blues. The

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first recordings of the blues were made in the 1920's of Mississippi delta 'country' tradition and the 'classic' vaudevilled-based blues. Songs from the early Mississippi region played heavily accented accompaniment to the often guttural and always expressive singing. The subject of the "blues" came as the blues existed as a perpetual presence in the life of the early African American. Often, the early singers were illiterate and could not read music, so improvisation, both verbal and musical, was fundamental to the style. W.C. Handy, commonly regarded as "the father of the blues," was the first man to popularize the blues, and Ma Rainey (Gertrude Malissa Nix Pridgett Rainey) was the earliest professional blues singer; she claims to have given the music form its name. Barrelhouse blues, with an emphasis on the piano, got its start in Texas and Louisiana where the singers gathered in makeshift lumber-camp saloons. The migration of African Americans to northern cities, especially Chicago, in the 1920's brought about a new form known as 'urban' blues. This tradition was coarser and fiercer than earlier styles. This later, in the 1940's, led to the music style known as rhythm and blues. Despite geographical differences, from rural roadhouses to urban centers such as Atlanta, Chicago, New Orleans, and Dallas, the blues as an orally transmitted folk art has created moods shared by artists and audiences alike. The mistaken characterization of the blues as

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inevitably "sad" may be the result of misunderstanding the sense of tension that is indigenous to the black blues singer who finds as her subject matter deprivations, problems, and troubles. Despite the subject matter, the blues almost always contains laughter, and, as Baker suggests, this happens when a kind of "existential" voice transforms the burdens of woe and melancholy into a force expressing affirmation of life and hope. In addition, the expressive mode of the blues allows blacks to perpetuate traditions and to keep values from being erased. Maya Angelou offers her perception of what constitutes the blues in two of her poems. In "A Good Woman Feeling Bad" (Shaker. Why Don't You Sincr?) Angelou explores the subject of the blues and admits in the first stanza that everybody feels the blues at some time. Addressing the reader, she says that your whole life may be the blues, or you may experience the blues at intermitten times, in particular when you feel lonely. Declaring that she has known "persecuting" blues that "could stalk like tigers, break like bone," she catalogs with exacting macabre images some of the causative agents of the profound depth of feeling in the blues. As LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) points out in Blues People (1963), an incisive analysis of the historical and cultural implications of African-American music, that blues music relates directly to African Americans and their

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personal experiences and involvement in a society that once enslaved them (94). Thus, the blues arose from the needs of this group. Angelou reaffirms in her poem that the blues spirit is perpetuated by memories of the injustices associated with slavery and oppression in the South— lynchings, discrimination, and displacement. Even though the speaker is resigned that the blues are a part of her life, the voicing of her troubles helps her to endure; by the end of the poem the tone is light .and indicates movement away from the blues: All riddles are blues, And all blues are sad, And I'm only mentioning Some blues I've had. (172) In "Song for the Old Ones" (Oh Prav Mv Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well). Angelou again captures the mood, spirit, and feel of the African-American music form known as the blues. The central message in this poem is about the denigrating effects of submission. She told Walter Blum, an interviewer for California Living, that "Song for the Old Ones" is her favorite poem, for she attempts to pay tribute to the "Uncle Toms" that the young blacks laugh at and ridicule (Elliot 44). She argues: We often don't realize how those people who were scratching when they didn't itch, laughing when they weren't tickled, and saying,

'Yassuh, you

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sho' is right, I sho' is stupid," we don't know how many times their throats closed on them in pain. They did that so they could make a little money, so they could pay for somebody to go to school, to get some shoes. So that poem is for them. A lot of my work is for them, because I know they were successful, because if they hadn't been successful I wouldn't be here to talk about it. (Elliot 44-45) In this poem the speaker gains an awareness of her "Fathers" and what they outwardly profess about understanding and submission. From the park benches the thin old men nod as they ostensibly propose that "it's understanding that makes the world go round . . .It's our submission that makes the world go round" (100) . Despite the words of the patriarchs, the speaker envisions the suffering caused by "the chains and slavery's coffles[,] the whip and lash and stock" (100). Angelou dares to express in her poem what her "Fathers" hide through pretended submission. She exposes the quick cunning of those African Americans that project "lowly Uncle Tomming and Aunt Jemimas' smiles." The actual pain is suggested in the poem as Angelou describes the old ones with images of withered flanks, broken burnt candles, and pleated faces. Angelou, who recognizes that many African Americans

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"laughed to shield their crying," celebrates their ability to channel repressed feelings into the blues form. She declares that it is from oppression and the resulting feelings of repression that the blues emerge. As seen in her autobiographies, Angelou does not view her life with bitterness and despair. Rather, she acknowledges that denigration can serve as an impetus for movement and strength. She shows in this poem that through the blues song, African Americans have a vehicle to express "with screams" their unrealized dreams and their frustrations of outwardly resigning to those in control. In the end Angelou understands the message of the "Fathers" which "did derive from living on the edge of death." She understands that the experiences of her "Fathers," even those of submission, make them stronger and keep them alive. As the speaker directs her anguish into the poem, she finds relief in the release that the song affords her. Thus, the poem moves from an initial self-doubt to stoicism to strong affirmation. In Baker's attempt to define the blues, he notes that the lyrics may include an initial self-accusation which often shifts to a humorous acknowledgement of the duplicitous nature of the speaker's life and environment. Also, mention of a troubled mind is likely, and incidents of harsh manual labor may be expressed wryly. Religious invocations often accompany existential declarations of unfulfilled needs. Hope is expressed in a brighter future

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while love, even with its obvious confines, provides an outlet for the overwhelming miseries of the overworked, overwrought speaker (Blues Ideology 4-5) . Clearly this is the ethos of the speaker who is conditioned by an "economics of slavery." Baker argues that when we consider the ecomonic conditions of African-American experience, the blues performance is a network that often mediates poverty and abundance. The singer and her performance conjoin the history of slavery with the future possibility of commercial gain. Through formal expression in the blues form that begins with accounts of lack followed by accounts of commercial possibility, the blues performance mediates creativity and commerce (8-9). Baker also argues that the blues can be viewed as a code conditioned by signification (5), similar to the notion of Signifyin(g) that Henry Louis Gates, Jr. posits in The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (1988). Both Gates and Baker advance theories that have as their premise the power of the vernacular to inform all formal black literaure. Gates's theory in The Signifying Monkey parallels Baker's tenets that African Americans have maintained distinct aspects of their vernacular culture that are encoded in their art. Gates explains Signifyin(g) as a thematic rhetorical strategy preserved from early West African cultures that in the African-American vernacular

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tradition, manifest itself in a use of richly figurative discourse, full of innuendo, indeterminancy, and ambiguity. Through the principle of repetition and difference and the practice of intertextually, Signifyin(g) operates as a rhetorical structure as well as a theory of interpretation. As Baker explains, blues signification includes not only verbal discursive formations, but even various musical expressions, such as the whoop of a harmonica or the vamp of a guitar, which are manifested in such a way that they "stand," in Umberto Eco's words "for something else" (5-6). These and similar instances are always intertextually related by the blues code. The sound of the instrument conveys cultural signals that operate onomatopoeicaly to suggest actual human experience (6). The sound of "train-wheels-over-track-junctures" is, according to Baker, the most dominant blues syntagmatic complement and provides the imperative rhythm of movement in the blues (8). The musical rendition of these "locomotive energies" suggests a "toughness of spirit and resilience, a willingness to transcend difficulties" (11). The railway image brings to mind the desire for freedom and movement. The train whistle signals new possibilities, and the sound of its wheels signifies powerful movement (11). To illustrate his idea of the blues as a forceful matrix in cultural understanding, Baker uses the image of the black blues singer at a railway junction translating his

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experience into song. At this intersection the producer of the blues conjoins the myriad of experiences of the culture which are polymorphous and multidirectional like travelers at any railway junction (7). Although the blues singer appears to fix the experience at the junction, the singer and the song can only comment on one instance at any given time, and the subjects and their experiences at the junction are ever-changing. Thus, the blues singer and his production work as codifiers of the travelers, their experiences and the settings, but there is never a definitive signification. Even the rhythms imitate change and movement (8). This last supposition seems to account for both the annonymous nature of the speaker as well as the ephemeral characteristics of the blues itself.

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CHAPTER THREE BLUES-RELATED STRUCTURAL INFLUENCES As outlined in the preceding chapter, Houston Baker, Jr. argues for theoretical bases that would allow a method of analysis to explain how African-American texts preserve and communicate culturally unique meanings. Applying Baker's concept of the matrix as blues force to Maya Angelou's poetry shows evidence that her works are both encoded in and reflective of the vernacular culture. Maya Angelou succeeds as a major voice for African Americans using a blues style that concurrently preserves a part of her cultural heritage through both content and form. Some critics of Angelou have failed to understand that Angelou's vernacular language, in particular her blues expressive mode, exemplifies those modes that flourish in African-American literary-theoretical discourse, and that through Angelou's individual insight, we can discern much about African-American culture and consciousness. I also contend that what appears to be simple folk expression in Angelou's poetry deserves to be seen as sensitive and complex renderings of important artistic and cultural work. This chapter examines the blues-related folk sources that are reflected in the structures and styles of some of Angelou's poems. Specifically, this chapter addresses: 1) structural and rhythmic parallels to the common AAB and AAA blues forms, and 2) similarities to the work song tradition, which paved the way for the blues to

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emerge. It is important to note that, although similarities exist between Angelou's verse and a number of blues elements, Angelou is not merely an imitative artist, for she explores her deeply personal perspective in a creative way that speaks Maya Angelou, the woman, and Maya Angelou, a representative of social consciousness. Although there are exceptions to most statements about the blues form, 8-, 12-, 16-, and 32-bar patterns of harmonic progressions have evolved to form the basis of what is generally considered to be the typical blues song formula. In order to maximize improvisation by the blues musician, the most common pattern developed is the 12-bar form known as the 12-bar AAB pattern. The bars, or measures, are in 4/4 time with three lines having four bars each. Often the lyrics express sentiments that are generally sad and sorrowful in a three-line stanza form with the second line repeating the first (sometimes with slight variation for emphasis) and the third line an improvisation, often rhyming, of the first two lines. On occasions the artist repeats the line three times following an AAA pattern. The vocals, however, do not take up the entire twelve measures, and the words do not correspond to the four counts of time in each measure. Instead, several words are sung for one beat, and the vocals take slightly more than half of the measures to sing while instrumental responses, usually from

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the guitar, take up slightly less than half of the measures. Of course, Angelou, as a literary print artist, does not rely on instrumental impositions to accompany her art (note 1) . The lyrics of her poems rarely show a discernable blues pattern that would correspond to the musical 12-bar AAB or AAA pattern. Yet, it is interesting to note that Angelou does use the AAB pattern in poems that contain their messages in the last lines of the stanzas or in final stanzas similar to the often-used blues song AAB pattern that comments on a despairing situation in the first two lines and offers a response and possible solution in the third line. A tension builds through the AA sequence and is often released through the B line. This blues rationality takes the form of the familiar call and response pattern of the work song. A typical blues verse of this nature follows: Sometimes I feel like nothin,' somethin' th'owed away Sometimes I feel like nothin,' somethin' th'owed away Then I get my guitar and play the blues all day. (Work 29) Similarly, Angelou employs an underlying AAB pattern seen in the three stanzas of "Me and My Work" (I Shall Not Be Moved): the speaker sings of his blues in the first two stanzas while he comments optimistically and accepts his life in the third stanza. Like much of blues lyricism, the

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message is delivered from a first person point of view stressing an emotional dimension: I got a piece of a job on the waterfront.

Got three big children to keep in school,

My story ain't news and it ain't all sad. Following the first line in each stanza is the poet's improvisation, here with lyrics to clarify, ellucidate or expand the initial idea and which take the place of instrumental accompaniment. As the blues singer uses instrumental improvisation, such as the strumming of the guitar or the whine of the harmonica, to sustain the message, Angelou uses the lyrics of the rest of each stanza in a similar manner. The final stanza of the poem concludes with a message of strength through optimism and humility similar to those themes found in Angelou's autobiographical statements: There's plenty worse off than me. Yet, the only thing I really don't need is strangers' sympathy. That's someone else's word for caring.

(22)

Angelou varies the order of song and explanatory improvisation in "Many and More" (I Shall Not Be Moved),

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also expressed in the first-person point of view, by using the underlying AAB sentence pattern in single lines following each of the three stanzas. The call and response pattern is again apparent as the first two stanzas describe the want and need of a friend, while the third line suggests the probable solution that the friend must be the speaker's lover:

I have want of a friend.

I have need of a friend.

And that one is my love. (22) As in the previous poem, "Me

and My Work,"Angelou uses

improvisation in "Many and More", but this time the message lyrics of the AAB pattern follow the improvisational lyrics. As indicated by the title "Changes" (Shaker. Why Don't You Sina), the speaker sings of the certain mutability of life. This AA sequence in stanzas one and two laments the "fickle comfort" and "capricious peace" that create an acute sense of

unrest for the mind. In the first stanza,

Angelou

pictures

"fickle comfort" as a bird flying away from the

speaker without offering an explanation for the change. In the second stanza the images are harsher and suggest that "capricious peace" admits from time to time such distresses as severed nerves, a jagged mind, shattered dreams, and

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loveless sleep. The third stanza serves to soothe and remind the speaker and audience that a feeling of confidence can be expected from time to time. There is hope expressed in the message which may first appear to be resigned hope with an underlying assumption that feelings of confidence inevitably give way to feelings of non-confidence. Yet, the continuity of change actually comforts the speaker and reinforces her confidence: Confidence, that popinjay, Is planning now To slip away Look fast It's fading rapidly Tomorrow it returns to me. (204) In this poem, Angelou establishes tension with undeniable ambiguity about the outcome of the situation, showing that even though the release of tension in the blues is usually suggested, it is not always achieved. There is a more pertinent parallel in Angelou's poetry to the lyrical and structural patterns found in the earliest blues singing. Though the origins of the blues remain obscure and undocumented, its roots are undoubtably exclusively African-American. The vocal style of the genre shows evidence that the blues derived from the communal field hollers and southern work songs of those African

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Americans living in the antebellum southern plantation culture. For this group of Americans, music was, and remained, a participant activity rather than primarily a performer-audience interaction. Slaves working in the cotton or tobacco fields often communicated through song with calls, cries, or hollers. These were often single word phrases repeated several times. Some calls were for help; others were for water or food. Some were simply expressions of inner feelings of the moment, while others were signals with furtive meanings about the slave owners and overseers or about the singers' possible escape plans. Sometimes the calls were answered with a responsorial "leader and chorus" form. Similar to the spirituals in the numerous rhythmic and verbal repetitions, secular work songs were a vital element in the lives of early African-American workers. Also like the spirituals, though through a different vein, work songs afforded the singers' an escape from their immediate surroundings and gave them strength to persevere even in adverse circumstances (Levine 202-217) . The popularity and the style of the antebellum slave songs continued after the Civil War when many African Americans found jobs on boats, in mines, in lumber camps, in factories, and on railroads where they helped to pass the time with new songs similar in form to the pre-war songs. Again, the style of the music was useful for setting the pace, communicating information, and providing diversion.

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Most of the songs were strongly rhythmic with the rhythm of the melody and the tempo for each song dependent upon the kind of work being performed. The worksong leader coordinated rhythms to maximize the workers' physical labors. Workers would sing in steady rhythms with regular pauses recreating the sounds associated with their labors, for instance, a hammer striking steel spikes, cargo being loaded into a ship, or factory machinery in operation. Recreating the work songs of a steel driver, the popular blues song, "John Henry," immortalized the legend of John Henry (note 2), paid tribute to him (and others like him) as a hero, and functioned as a motivation for other such workmen. The title of Angelou's fourth volume of poetry. Shaker. Whv Don't You Sina. comes from a John Henry song. One variation follows: This is the hammer that killed John Henry. This is the hammer that killed John Henry. This is the hammer that killed John Henry. But it

won't kill me, Lord,

But it

won't kill me. (Work 233)

In four of her five volumes of poems, Angelou reminds us that some of the characteristics from the earlier field hollarsand work

songs have survived into themusic

and

poetry of contemporary African Americans, thus still effectively communicating certain aspects of her vernacular

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culture. Despite his overall negative commentary in an essay review of Angelou's third volume of poetry, And Still I Rise. R.B. Stepto concedes that Angelou "is on her surest ground when she 'borrows' various folk idioms and forms and thereby buttresses her poems by evoking aspects of a culture's written and unwritten heritage" (312). Through an examination of the Angelou poems that reflect the characteristics of content and form from the work song, we can ascertain the poet's ability to capture with poignant accuracy the rhythms of life, in these cases the rhythms of work and workers, through the medium of verse. In "Times-Square-Shoeshine-Composition"

(Just Give Me a

Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie. Part Two), the speaker, a shoeshine boy, like the earlier singing workers, relies on the rhythm and repetition of his song to maintain his pace as well as to relieve the boredom of his labors, while the language and rhythm in the song imitate the sound of his work. This is especially true of the repetitive onomatoepia, "pow pow, " punctuating each line of the poem. This poetic effect imitates the sound of the movement of the shoeshine boy's cloth across his patron's shoes. Likewise, the sound of the alternating lines, here used for communicating information, imitates the rhythm of the cloth at work, while the lyrics provide the shoeshine boy a vehicle to boast of his talents and abilities: I'm the best that ever done it

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(pow pow) that's my title and I won it (pow pow) I ain't lying, I'm the best (pow pow) Come and put me to the test (pow pow). (32) Throughout the poem, the speaker demonstrates his control of the vernacular language. His use of repetition and difference to convey meaning is an example of what Henry Louis Gates, Jr. identifies as the guiding principle in African-American discourse--Signifyin(g). Through the clever, rhetorical language of the trickster figure, the shoeshine boy "Signifies" upon his tale in front of potential customers in a verbal play of figurative elements. The speaker also "Signifies" on the "dozens," perhaps the most well-known subsets of Signifyin(g) in which the participants engage in a verbal fusilade of insults directed at each others' relatives, appearance or situation. The object of the "dozens" game is to maintain emotional control; the first person to give into anger is the loser. The speaker in this poem advertises that he will "clean 'em til they squeak" and "shine 'em til they whine"; therefore, he says that he is not open to bartering his price through the verbal dueling game, "the dozens"

(note 3). Because of

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the indeterminant nature of Signifyin(g) which achieves its effect through indirect and ambiguous argumentation, it could be suggested that the shoeshine boy in this case actually welcomes "dozens" playing: For a quarter and a dime (pow pow) You can get the dee luxe shine (pow pow) Say you wanta pay a quarter? (pow pow) Then you give that to your daughter (pow pow) I ain't playing dozens mister (pow pow). (32-33) In the final stanza the shoeshine boy audaciously defends his stance and identifies himself as "a cap'tilist" Say I'm like a greedy bigot (pow pow) I'm a cap'tilist, can you dig it? (pow pow). (33) Again, the shoeshine boy speaks as a trickster figure, here using catchy rhyme and rhythm to achieve humor in Signifyin(g) meaning upon greed, bigotry and capitalism. In this way Angelou satirizes the capitalistic system that enslaved and oppressed her people. Her use of irony at the end--that the shoeshine boy would espouse the capitalistic

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system— is characteristic of many poems in Part Two of Just flive Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie. "Woman Work" (And Still I Rise. Part Two) captures the fluid movements of women at work. The first stanza parallels in some ways "Times-Square-Shoeshine-Composition" with obvious contrasts in the setting and the gender of the speaker. The speaker in the first stanza of "Woman Work" catalogs her chores with a quick rhythm of short lines and catchy rhymes: I've got the children to tend The clothes to mend The floor to mop The food to shop Then the chicken to fry Then baby to dry I've got company to feed The garden to weed I've got the shirts to press The tots to dress The cane to be cut I gotta clean up this hut Then see about the sick And the cotton to pick. (144) We do not detect despair in the speaker even though she has many chores to complete. Rather, she receives power and

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energy from the enabling rhythm of her work song. The last line of the section reveals that the speaker, in addition to being responsible for the household chores typically assigned to females, must perform arduous labor in the cotton fields. Thus, this poem suggests that the effects of the ever present "ecomonics of slavery" impose additional restrictions on the female. The second part of the poem, which consists of four shorter stanzas, sings a song to nature. Even though the blues rarely use nature as a subject matter, this accompaniment functions for the speaker as an avenue to psychological release from the reality of her work in the same way that earlier field workers would sing of a different place and time to escape their oppressive work conditions. Through the coupling of the work song with a song of personal expression to the natural world, the speaker creates the necessary balance to accept her challenge and move forward. Although the first poem in Oh Pray Mv Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well. "Pickin Em Up and Laying Em Down," does not treat the subject of work, it does contain a work song structure and rhythm that according to a reviewer for Choice. "beg[s] to be read aloud" (1439). "Pickin Em Up and Layin Em Down," introduces Part One of the volume, a section of four poems with somewhat serious topics treated with humor and at times even mockery. This ballad-like poem makes

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a humorous comment about the transiency of the speaker's feelings of love. The speaker discovers new love in every town through which he (note 4) travels, and he can never commit to one sole lover. As the speaker describes his movement from place to place (San Francisco, Birmingham, and Detroit), he repeats the title line three times in the concluding sentence of each of the four stanzas, creating a work song rhythm pattern: I started to Pickin em up and laying em down, Pickin em up and laying em down, Pickin em up and laying em down, getting to the next town Baby. (54) The rhythm created in this repetition indicates body movements, not for work but for travel, reminding us that many of the work songs and later blues songs express a desire to travel or escape. Here Angelou captures with precision the rhythmic movements of the speaker as he frolics from town to town. The three-line repetition provides a basic pattern to which the singer adds improvisation to reflect his individual experience. In

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"Pickin Em Up and Laying Em Down" we can see Angelou's ability to mesh the basic work song structure with her individual variances; here she opts for a variation of subject matter. The subject of love occurs frequently in Angelou and the blues in general.

(This topic will be

discussed in more depth in the next chapter.) Another poem similiar in structure and sound to the work song is "One More Round" (And Still I Rise. Part Two), a poem in which Angelou combines work song characteristics with a voice of protest, thus showing the effectiveness of utilizing former discursive blues structures to address social and political concerns of the present. Angelou told Claudia Tate in an interview that "protest is an inherent part of my work. You can't just not write about protest themes or not sing them. It's a part of life. If I don't agree with a part of life, then my work has to address it" (Tate 7-8). In "One More Round" Angelou demonstrates her ability to voice political concerns through verse while employing a mode of expression that preserves the blues discursive structure of her culture. According to R. B. Stepto, Angelou's coupling of work and protest here as a new artistic approach is "absolutely first rate," yet he labels this poem as ineffective (312) . I argue that this poem does work, primarily because Angelou brazenly voices her protests through rhythms that so closely resemble those of AfricanAmerican song.

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In this eight stanza poem, the speaker willingly acceptsher lot

that she will have to work

while she cries against working

all of herlife,

as a slave and against a

system that supports such oppression. She introduces this treatise in the first stanza in a song of social protest that affords her a psychic relief from the existing, oppressive social system: There ain't no pay beneath the sun As sweet as rest when a job's well done. I was born to work up to my grave But I was not born To be a slave. The following work song refrain occurs without variation in alternating stanzas two, four, six, and eight: One more round And let's heave it down One more round And let's heave it down. The beat Angelou establishes here is reminiscent of rhythms that actually supplied a beat to time work with controlled body movements, providing synchronization for the workers' efforts. Note the apparent similarities to the song by Louisiana railroad workers used to coordinate their group efforts: Come on cross-tie-(umph)

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Git yo' place-(umph) Train be comin-(umph) By-an'-by-(umph). (Levine 209) The rhythm of Angelou's song also suggests a tension associated with the feeling of struggle. Moreover, from the rhythmic effects of the intermitting work song, the speaker receives the necessary energy to sustain her voice of protest. In stanzas three, five, and seven, she continues to express her concession to work, not only for herself but also for her family members who "know the grind." Simultaneously, the speaker is personal and representative. The personal speaker is an individual speaker, like the modern blues singer, who uses the lyrics as a means for psychological release from her present condition which, in this poem, she likens to that of a slave. This speaker sings the song to vent her emotions without the necessity of an audience. Making reference to her "brothers and sisters," the representative voice sings a protest presuming that the situation is not merely an individual fate. Thus, the song itself serves as a vehicle of a collective expression of protest and discontent. The assumed audience's response to the song and the situation, analagous to that of the speaker, indicates a fusion of individual consciousness with the group consciousness. The inclusion of the work song in alternating stanzas further reinforces this idea of group

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solidarity. "Worker's Song" (first poem in I Shall Not Be Moved). also suggestive of work songs with the repetitive chanting of "Whoppa, Whoppa/Whoppa, Whoppa," celebrates workers and their accomplishments. The sound of "Whoppa, Whoppa" throughout the song signifies the presence of machinery while it also preserves the pace for the continuation of the work. Hazel Rochman, reviewer for Booklist. sees this poem, which she refers to as "exquisitely simple," as the best in the collection. Comparing it to Paul Robeson's singing and Langston Hughes's "Florida Road Workers," Rochman sees rhythm and sense uniting here where wit and longing take their form in physical action (1773). The speakers are shipworkers, railroad workers, automobile and airplane manufacturers and mechanics, and factory workers, and through them Angelou emphasizes power and strength. The speakers remind us of the toil, drudgery and grind of an oftentimes overworked segment of the working class in the United States. Yet, the speakers in the poem express not bitterness but pride and strength in their manual labors. They understand and communicate the importance of their endeavors which are responsible for the necessary movement of people or goods: Big ships shudder down to the sea

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because of me Railroads run on a twinness track 'cause of my back

Cars stretch to a super length 'cause of my strength Planes fly high over seas and lands 'cause of my hands. (3) The final stanza reiterates the importance of these workers and relates the struggle of a people whose labors and strength "start the factory humming," and who "work late" to "keep the whole world running" (3). The speakers acknowledge that they have "something . . . something/coming . . . coming . . . "

to reward their efforts. Angelou does not

define the "something" and thus summons the reader to get involved at this point and offer his or her response. Structural elements in the blues occur with variation, permitting and encouraging improvisation. The attempt here has not been to provide a comprehensive analysis of either blues structures or the structures in Angelou's poetry. Rather, an attempt has been made to show examples of selected structural parallels which would indicate that Angelou's poetry is informed by blues vernacular energies.

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An understanding of the rhetorical tradition at work in African-American vernacular expression has helped to elucidate my reading of the Angelou poems discussed in this chapter. In the next two chapters I hope to further demonstrate the usefulness of explicating Angelou's poetry in blues terms through an examination of pervasive themes.

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CHAPTER FOUR THE BLUES OF LOVE I This chapter will examine poems in which Maya Angelou treats the most pervasive thematic scheme of the blues— love and broken romance. In particular, attention will be given to the frustrations and anxieties associated with love that lead to feelings of melancholy and despair. Like many blues singers, Angelou deals with the pain of love, especially lost love, and the loneliness that experiences of love often bring. This chapter will analyze Maya Angelou's blues voice of the aggrieved lover who comments on the suffering caused by love relationships. The underlying message is that love is inherently painful. The love poems, however, serve two purposes: 1) as a cathartic vehicle for the lover's suffering; and 2) as a way of providing comfort in the realization that one is not alone in one's suffering. The most prominent topic of the blues is the man/woman relationship and the disappointment that can result from this human interaction. The most frequently expressed stanzaic idea in the blues is the difficulty of keeping a lover (Titon 182). Son House, in his explanation of downhome blues subject matter, said: You know sometime--I don't know who it was that started this thing, this blues business. You know it ain't but one way you--the blues exists, and

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that comes between male and female bein' in love. Uh-huh. And when one has been deceived by the other. And then he gets the blues, that is, if they love each other. Yeah. Then they get the blues,

(qtd. in Titon 182)

The conspicuous use of love as the subject matter in a substantial number of blues is because, according to David Evans in Big Road Blues, love relationships account for the most change and fluctuation in people's lives (29). In Black Culture and Black Consciousness Lawrence Levine refers to folk definitions of the blues that equate them with disappointment in love: Dem blues ain't nothin' But a woman lost her man.

De blues ain't nothing But a poor man's heart disease.

(276)

Early folk songs as well as modern published blues often have love— in particular the loss of love— as their themes. In W.C. Handy's Blues: An Anthology. Abbe Niles cites the following example: Oh, de Mississippi River is so deep an' wide, Oh, de Mississippi River is so deep an' wide, An' my gal lives on de odder side. (13) Billie Holiday defines the blues in her well-known song,

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"Lady Sings the Blues": Lady sings the blues. She's got them bad. She feels so sad And wants the world to know Just what her blues is all about.

The blues ain't nothin' but a pain in your heart When you get a bad start When you and your man have to part. Generally, blues songs about love are concerned with separated or unhappy lovers, and the singer relates her problem to her other problems.(13). David Evans points out that the blues celebrates both the joys and frustrations associated with love. He notes that the expressions are often boldly frank and often rich in sexual imagery. Problematic issues concerning love that signify the mutability of relationships, such as desertion, separation, and infidelity, are dealt with, and these often develop into another key theme in the blues: wanderlust and travel (28). The content of blues lyrics about love creates a poetic yet starkly realistic view of the male-female relationship (Keil 53). Lawrence Levine notes that in the blues, love is shown as "a fragile, often ambivalent relationship between imperfect beings," a depiction that differs from the idea of a perfect relationship so often expressed in popular white

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songs (276) . The depictions of love in the blues and in popular white music reflect different culturally-specific attitudes concerning sexual behavior. The following song of black miners and railroad gangs from Alabama in the early 1900s made fun of whites who indulged in coyness and denied themselves physical pleasure: White folks on the sofa Niggers on the grass White man is talking low Nigger is getting ass. (Levine 279) While many blues lyrics are concerned with love, Levine points out that we do not find in the blues the self-pity, the profound fatalism, and the disillusionment that mark other popular American music that deals with love (275). Love is portrayed in the blues as a multidimensional experience. In spite of all the disappointments and complaints, there is less demoralization in the blues than in popular music (279). Despite the mood of insistent melancholy in the blues, when they are sung, people laugh (note 1). This apparent contradiction reflects a dominant concept in African-American expression: the motif of "laughing to keep from crying" (Waldron 142). Although the chances for a permanent and harmonious relationship are recognized by the singer as slight, African-American music revels in the small possibility that

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exists of obtaining successful love, then mourns the emotional pain caused by failed relationships which leave the lovers' dreams and desires unfullfilled (272). The candid acknowledgement of imminent failure helps the singer to better understand the male-female relationship without unrealistic expectations which can lead to feelings of guilt or inadequacy when love fails. A number of Maya Angelou's poems are about love or make a reference to love. As in her autobiographies, Angelou stresses the significance of interpersonal relationships. She acknowledges the value of the support gained through human relationships, especially those involving love. In an interview for the Tampa Tribune. Angelou said, "Love affords wonder. And it is only love that gives one the liberty, the courage to go inside and see who am I really" (C4). Angelou's love poetry provides us with a view of the poet's private emotions, differing sharply with her protest poems with a more generalized public spokesperson voice. II Angelou's first volume of poetry, Just Give Me A Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie. consists of thirty-nine poems divided into two parts. "Part One: Where Love Is a Scream of Anguish" contains twenty poems, most of which have as their subject love and the loneliness and anguish that love, especially lost love, brings.

(Part Two features poetry of

racial confrontation and protest and will be analyzed in

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Chapter Five.) The title of Part One comes from "On Diverse Deviations," a short poem of fourteen lines that comes toward the end of the section. The speaker's perception of love is, at best, ambiguous. In this poem she knows that love presents itself as "a shimmering curtain / Before a door of chance" that may lead to pain. For the inexperienced lover, outward love is alluring and enticing, but it masks the risk of pain. The speaker does not willingly want to be taken "to a shore / Where love is the scream of anguish / And no curtain drapes the door." Yet, her life inevitably follows this path, despite the fact that she has knowledge of what lies behind the curtain, described here as a: ............ macabrous dance Of bones that rattle in silence Of blinded eyes and rolls Of thick lips thin, denying A thousand powdered moles Where touch to touch is feel And life a weary whore.

(20)

Similarly, in "The Detached," a poem that examines love in relationship to death and hell, the speaker asserts that we actually welcome "stranglers to our outstretched necks" who bring us death. Moreover, she tells us that we pray to unholy gods who without concern condemn us to hell. Likewise, we willingly dare to love those who will touch us

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with pain. The speaker in this poem feels frustration because love is intangible, and the physical contact can never form an external bond. Throughout Part One, Angelou's exacting delineations of the pain associated with love are initially difficult for the reader to confront, but as often observed in the blues, the voicing of the pain transforms the speaker's woes into a force expressing affirmation of hope, not resignation. Angelou sings a song of loneliness in the first poem of the section, "They Went Home," through a speaker who laments repeated losses of love relationships with men who invariably leave her after encounters in which they praise her physical and personal attributes. Yet, she makes it clear that she willingly submits to this kind of love even though she is cognizant of the inevitable disappointments. Like Blind Lemon Jefferson (note 2) in the following example, the potential lover in Angelou's poem sees her situation without illusions: Mmmmmmm, hitch me to your buggy, Mama, drive me like a mule Hitch me to your buggy and drive me like a mule Reason I'm going home with you sugar, I ain't much hard to be fooled.

(Levine 276)

The notion of love as inherently painful is introduced here in this first poem and re-surfaces throughout the first section; however, Angelou chooses to conclude the section

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with a poem that focuses on the desirable nature of love. The speaker in this last poem, "Sounds Like Pearls," eagerly awaits to hear her lover's voice, which "sounds like pearls" to her. She feels a sense of confidence through his voice which drives away all fear and doubt. Because most of the other poems in this section deal with pain associated with love, we can presume that this speaker will ultimately experience pain from the love she now enjoys, but Angelou concludes the section commenting on a positive note with the happiness that love brings. This poem shows that there is room in the blues for expressions of faithful, permanent, untroubled love. Thus the section concurrently reminds us of the perpetual presence of "the blues" in the speaker's life while allowing an avenue for the speaker, as well as the audience, to gain strength and to perceive hope and comfort for the future. The loss of love accounts for a prominent source of pain associated with love, as we find in the first poem and in three later poems in this section. As seen in this example from Levine, sorrowful lovers in the blues often wish for death or even threaten suicide: Gonna build me a scaffold, I'm gonna hang myself. Can't get the man I love, don't want nobody else. (276) Of course, the blues singer is not expected to commit suicide because the singing itself helps to release the pain

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and channel the emotions from the self-pity that would cause one to threaten suicide. In Angelou's poem "The Gamut," the pitiable speaker traces her love relationship. In the first stanza her lover approaches her when the day is "velvet soft" with a "bright . . . dusty sun." Their love relationship is recounted in the first and second stanzas with pleasing images of a "velvet soft" day with a bright, "dusty sun," "golden coaches," soft silky wind, and "silver throated" birds. When the speaker's true love speaks, the wind is "soft as silk" while the birds suspend their songs so she can hear her lover's "golden voice." Then the last stanza introduces images of death and darkness. As with the previous poem, the speaker laments the loss of love, in this case so intensely that she calls for death, the only means to quiet her heart: Come you death, in haste, do come My shroud of black be weaving, Quiet my heart, be deathly quiet, My true love is leaving. (5) The short poem entitled "Tears" operates as a carthartic tool for the speaker who experiences loss. The source of the pain here is the acknowledgement and acceptance of the "blue farewell of a dying dream." The end of the dream is what the speaker laments the most. Through tears, pictured as "the crystal rags . . . of a worn-through soul," and through moans, imaged as a "deep swan song," the

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speaker releases the pain of disappointment, not only from love but from any dream. Tears and moans are the result of intense emotions; the outward tears and moans express the inward experience. As with the blues singer, the poet's expression of the pain, through tears and moans in this case, is part of the network that mediates suffering and consolation. Blues love songs often show cheating on love as a catalyst for violence (Levine 408) . A Texas singer in 1895 threatened: If you don't quit monkeyin' with my luluh, tell what I'll do: I'll feel aroun' your heart with my razor, and I'll cut you half in two, Nigger man, I'll cut you half in two. (qtd. in Levine 409) This theme has continued throughout the history of the blues. The possibility of violence after infidelity is similarly the theme of Angelou's poem, "No Loser, No Weeper." as the speaker threatens violence against another person for taking her lover. Angelou uses understatement coupled with a tinge of humor in her poem in a similar manner to that of Merline Johnson's song from 1941 that threatens the use of physical violence to others who would consider taking her lover from her:

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I've got

a two-by-four, and it just fits my hand,

I've got

a two-by-four, and it just fits my hand,

I'm goin' to stop all you women from runnin' around with my man. (qtd in Levine 409) The speaker of "No Loser, No Weeper" begins by explaining that she hates to lose anything. She recalls memories of profound feelings of anger and deprivation when she lost certain items in the past: a dime, "I wish I was dead. I can't explain it":

a doll, "I believe she was

took, by some

doll-snatching sneak": and a watch, "I'll never forget it and all I can say / Is I really hate to lose something" (9). She then explains that her strong feelings for losing small items

like the dime, doll, and watch are miniscule in

comparison to her feelings

for losing her "lover-boy." The

speaker creates a threatening tone, through the use of verbal irony, when she suggests using violence as a means to protect her relationship. Addressing any woman who would consider taking away her lover, the speaker warns: I ain't threatening you madam, but he is my evening joy. And I mean I really hate to lose something.

(9)

Three of the poems in Part One deal with memories associated with love. "A Zorro Man” contains rich sexual images as the speaker remembers one particular sexual encounter, referred to here as a "general inhabitation/ long and like a dawn in winter," that occurred in a "wombed room"

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with silk purple drapes that allow the speaker only "a clitoral image" of her lover (6). Through a clean mirror the speaker sees herself trapped in memories of a past time when she was in love with a man who was "booted and brave and trembling for [her]." She now laments the past and her lost love. "When You Come to Me" continues the theme that love brings both joy and pain as the speaker remembers "long-ago rooms" where her lover gives her "Baubles of stolen kisses / Trinkets of borrowed loves / Trunks of secret words" (10). In this poem the unwelcomed memories of love result in making the speaker cry. However, the experience with pain here is softened because the speaker releases the pain through crying. Thus, like the earlier poem "Tears," this poem functions as a carthartic healer for the speaker. The idea of change is ever-present in blues expression, for the speaker is never arrested in one specific time. Rather she is always moving away from something and toward something else while integrating a myriad of experiences and variants. Like the blues singer and her song, Angelou and her verse signify the presence of limitless possibilities that coalesce into an intersection only for a brief instance. A number of poems in Part One of the first collection testify to this notion of indeterminacy in any given situation, especially those associated with love. Some merely acknowledge the certainty of change, while some

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poems, like

"In a Time," present change and the brevity of

happiness, "brief

as summer's fun," only to be followed by

winter's cold and unavoidable pain. The speaker in "In a Time" knows that "today prepares tomorrow's ruin." After happiness has its course, "then pain stalks in to plunder." In keeping with the section title and the general subject of the pain of

love, "In a Time" suggests that the happiness

lost is the

result of a lost love, one that involves

destructive deceit which further increases the pain through guilt. Through this poem, Angelou reaffirms the inevitability of change from happiness to sadness and reminds us that joy is brief, but the comforting words "in a time" remind us that the painful times will also change. This affirmation offers hope that the next change will be for the better. Angelou told Claudia Tate in an interview that the title of Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie: Refers to my belief that we as individuals in a species are still so innocent that we think we could ask our murderer just before he puts the final wrench upon the throat, 'Would you please give me a cool drink of water?' and he would do so. That's innocence. It's lovely. (Tate 10)

The loss of innocence and the distress associated with the movement from innocence to awareness is the theme of "Accident," another poem on the subject of love and change.

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The speaker has been seeing her love from an illusory, romantic viewpoint. This is often the case in new-love. By accident tonight she sees the reality that her lover is "grim and unkempt." His "vulgar-ness" is inescapable. Thus the speaker experiences the pain of confronting shattered illusions that have heretofore afforded pleasure and comfort as she notes, "I saw the colors fade and change . . . and the naked Black-White truth." The loss of an ideal constitutes the most difficult part of lost love. By accident and without intent, the speaker becomes aware that until we see the truth, we are content. The speaker in "To a Man" pays tribute to her lover, whom she describes as "Black Golden Amber." In her attempt to understand the man, she defines him as changing, secretive and gentle. But, because her lover is always changing, the speaker can never aptly draw a portrait in words of her lover. Her present understanding views him: Coughing laughter, rocked on a whorl of French tobacco Graceful turns on woolen stilts

Southern. Plump and tender with navy bean sullenness.

(7)

In her article, "Transcendence: The Poetry of Maya Angelou," Priscilla Ramsey argues that the altering nature of the

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man's physical and psychic characteristics, detailed in the poem with auditory, tactile and visual imagery, is exciting to the speaker, for she never knows what to expect from her subtle, sophisticated lover (146-147) . Furthermore, there is an exhilarating thrill in the mystery and expectation of the "New." The speaker welcomes her lover's inconstant state, for each change allows growth. Because change is inevitable, the speaker deems it wise to recognize the certainty of mutability in life, especially in relationships, and to learn to accept it while seeking means to adapt for survival. This poem differs from many of the other poems in Part One in that this poem does not indicate the certainty of pain for those who experience love. "To a Husband" is a tribute to Angelou's ancestral home of Africa and to her ex-husband Vusumzi Make (pronounced Mah-Kay), a South African freedom fighter (note 3). In her fourth autobiography, The Heart of a Woman. Angelou similarily expresses her love for Vusumzi Make through images of the African landscape: His musical accent, his persuasive hands and the musk of his aftershave lotion, hypnotized me into believing I lived beside the Nile and its waters sang my evensong. I stood with Masai shepherds in the Ngorongoro crater, shooing lions away from my sheep with a wave of an elephant hair whisk.

(134)

The speaker in "To a Husband" tells her husband that he has

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the strength and beauty that she loves about Africa, "You're Africa to me at brightest dawn . . .

a continent to build."

Two predominant images occur in the first stanza. The speaker begins by describing her husband's powerful voice, "at times a fist / Tight in [his] throat / Jabs ceaselessly at phantoms / in the room." The second image of the first stanza likens his strong hand to a "carved and skimming boat" traveling the Nile in search of Pharaoh's tomb. The entire second stanza describes the speaker's husband with loving memories of Africa. The power of Make is underscored by the power of Africa, a land that stands to reclaim her pride. In addition, the speaker credits her own understanding of her mother continent to her husband, "I sit at home and see it all through you." Like "To a Man," this poem differs from many in this section because it never mentions pain. The poem may present something other than love, perhaps respect and admiration. Or maybe Angelou is saying that we can only truly love one whom we respect and admire. Blues sometimes are written for didactic reasons. Like slave tales, sometimes they resemble West African moral tales in both content and form (call and response). Levine cites evidence that the music forms of African Americans are similar to the West African communal musical traditions common to almost all of the specific cultures from which

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African-American slaves came. The moral tale subjects included working on the Sabbath, human dependence on God, and the importance of kindness. Angelou's "Late October" reminds the reader of the cyclical nature of life. It expresses a didactic message, in a reassuring tone, that the endings are not really endings because they are part of a cycle; therefore, the endings perpetuate beginnings. In this poem, darkness, associated with the autumn, offers a positive image. Black provides comfort. Lovers interpret the autumn as the symbol of endings, "a signal end to endings." Some experience alarm, but the wise see the ending as merely a pause before beginning again. Although the majority of Angelou's love poems indicate that unhappiness comes from involvement with love, the frustrated lover insists on returning to the source of the pain as if she is pulled by fate beyond her control. Ill The subject and theme of love are less pronounced in Angelou's second volume of poetry, Oh Prav Mv Winers Are Gonna Fit Me Well, for the subjects are more varied in this volume than in the first. Thirty-six poems occur in five parts without subtitles. In eight of the eleven poems in Part Two of this volume, Angelou treats the subject of love, this time with more optimism and less concern about the pain of lost love and loneliness. In the second poem of the first section Angelou

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introduces the subject of love. In "Now Long Ago" the speaker retrospectively comments on an affair that began years ago in the spring. Initially the speaker was not affected by her lover during the "innocent spring," innocent because the speaker is unaware of the significance of the relationship. His voice meant less to her "than tires turning on a distant street." Summer brought the affair to fruition in a "bold impatient" manner, the summer

and the memories of

are almost forgotten except when the silence of

midnight awakens her feelings. These feelings were much deeper than she thought. In the still of the night, the memories are inescapable. Part of living for Angelou is reaffirmed by recalling memories of old loves and recognizing the value of them, despite their loss. "Greyday," characteristic of the simplicity of the blues, is composed of three lines which lament the speaker's loneliness caused by a separation from a loved one. As the speaker reflects on the source of her grief, her state of mind is overcome by sadness. Consequently, she likens the separation

to a dreary day, and using Christian imagery she

states the enormity of her pain: The day hangs heavy loose and grey when you're away.

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A crown of thorns a shirt of hair is what I wear. A sense of profound loneliness dominates the poem and is made clear in the final stanza: No one knows my lonely heart when we're apart. As

(64)

insome blues lyrics, this poem offers no room for

optimism

and the mood of melancholy is never lifted. A

similiar example of such a dire melancholy mood follows: My moder's dead, my fader's 'crost de sea, My moder's dead, my fader's 'crost de sea, Ain't got nobody to feel 'an care for me. (Niles 14) Yet, in "Greyday" the simplicity of the standard blues pattern of three simple lines is an effective vehicle for the tormented speaker to release the tension caused by her feelings of "blueness." "Poor Girl" speaks to a former lover who now has someone new, someone who adores the lover in the same way the speaker previously loved the lover. The first stanza shows how we allow ourselves to be deceived. The speaker knows that the new girl, whom she calls the "poor girl," will sing the same song when the lover leaves her too. In the second stanza the speaker would like to tell the "poor

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girl" the truth so another heart will not be broken, but she knows the new girl would not listen or would simply misunderstand. Here Angelou comments on how we ignore the warnings about the pain of lost love. The hurt of the speaker is expressed in her prophecy about the "poor girl" who will "cry and wonder/what went wrong" and will then suffer like the speaker. The speaker has an awareness that the "poor girl" must come to understand through experience. "Senses of Insecurity" is a carefully wrought love memoir in which the speaker loses her senses when she answers, despite the costs, the calls of love. In her attempts to remember the relationship, she achieves a dreamlike quality which Angelou captures with excellent lyrics. The insecurity intimated in the title occurs because of the possibility that the love relationship will end. In addition, the speaker lacks control of her feelings, and this makes her feel insecure. The last four lines of this eight line verse are the most powerful in expressing the overwhelming emotions that love can evoke: I 'd touched your features inchly heard love and dared the cost. The scented spiel reeled me unreal and found my senses lost. "Alone" stresses the necessity of human relationships. The speaker in this poem repeats six times that "nobody can

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make it out here alone." The poem warns against even trying to make it alone. In the second stanza the poet comments that even money provides little comfort to someone who is alone. In the third stanza the poet makes an apocalyptic statement that because "the race of man is suffering," we must form alliances with others for survival. In her solitude the speaker realizes that her soul longs for another one to bond with in some way. Although Angelou laments the insecurity in her relationships, she uses a tinge of humor to bolster her sense ofself-pride and worth. Such humor prevents self-pity as in the following example: Gwine lay my head right on de railroad track Gwine lay my head right on de railroad track If de train come 'long I'm gwine snatch it back. (Levine 276) "Communication I" contains humor about a self-conscious speaker who longs for physical embraces from her suitor as they walk together along a beach. Instead he tries to woo her with his knowledge of the world as he quotes lines from Pope, Shaw and Salinger, and he attempts to recreate with words the feel of romantic places such as the Parthenon and Cleopatra's barge. However, the speaker is completely bored by her suitor's approach. The final irony is that she misunderstands him so grossly that she believes he loves someone else. Despite his ardent efforts, the lovers have a

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complete lack of communication. The speaker longs for love, yet she is impervious to the opportunity presented by her suitor. Thus, the self-consciousness of the speaker results in feelings of disappointment because she cannot perceive love's actuality. In "Come, and Be My Baby," the self-confident speaker offers her answer to her lover who wonders about life. Her answer to chaos, described as a "highway . . . full of big cars going nowhere fast," is to share love. Love relationships, even though they are often temporary, provide a refuge from the troubles. Love stands as a contrast to problems and horrors occurring in the world: Some prophets say the world is gonna end tomorrow But others say we've got a week or two The paper is full of every kind of blooming horror And you sit wondering What you're gonna do. I got it. Come. And be my baby.

(67)

Another poem in which Angelou views the joy of love occurs as the last poem of part two. "A Conceit" is a beautiful poem in which the speaker asks only for the touch of a hand, a conjoining without the presumptous words and

i.

_

_.

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expectations that others associate with love. This hand, which will "lead and follow," can provide the necessary strength and support for the speaker, but the couple will not fall to imitate words and indulgent feelings of "love of loss [and] of love."

The touch of the hand suffices. IV

In And Still I Rise Angelou, like in her first volume, devotes almost an entire section to the subject of love. Again, it is the first section of the volume, this time entitled, "Touch Me, Life, Not Softly." Six of the eight poems in Part One deal with love. A reviewer for The Blade (Toledo, Ohio) refers to this section as: Preoccupied with love in all its aspects, love forever, and love 'just for a time'; the joy of tender, lasting love, and the sad meaninglessness of promiscuity; the love that heals and the love that hurts. (Goldberg G10) In And Still I Rise. Angelou's image of the phenomenal woman brazenly dares to love despite the known and unknown costs. With more accurate rhythm than seen before in Angelou's poetry, the poet demonstrates her artistic control to render a natural lyrical quality in her verse. The first poem in Part One, "A Kind of Love, Some Say," reiterates Angelou's earlier theme in Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie: love, though joyous for a time, ultimately causes pain. African-American secular

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songs, and in particular the blues, deal with an entire range of love relationships ignored for years by white artists. Early African-American musicians were free to express the male-female relationship with a frankness that their audience accepted. A gamut of variant love relationships, including those involving prostitution, adultery, homosexuality, and physical abuse, are depicted in black music thus offering a true reflection of the actual lives of the singers (note 4). Again, this view of love is counterpoint to the romantic, idealized view of love often reflected in white mainstream art and letters. In the first poem of Part One, Angelou opts to explore the physical abuse and violence that some women experience in their love relationships. The poem begins in the first stanza with images of the pain caused from a lover's fist. The physical pain experienced in abusive relationships, here conveyed through images of broken bones and swollen eyelids, coinsides with the emotional pain the speaker also endures. The second stanza presents an idea that is disturbing for the reader--hate, in someways similar to love, is often confused, and "its limits are in zones beyond itself" (116) . The poem concludes with the idea that love can be intensely painful: Love by nature, exacts a pain Unequalled on the rack.

(116)

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This is the only poem in the section that explicitly expresses pain associated with love. The tone of the previous poem differs greatly with that of "Country Lover," a poem in which Angelou uses a quick, jazzy rhythm to illustrate a carefree picture of love. The speaker looks for a lover, any lover. Humor abounds here as Angelou examines this promiscuous country man who makes love indiscriminately: Funky blues Keen toed shoes High water pants Saddy night dance Red soda water and anybody's daughter.

(117)

In this poem Angelou shows a nonromantized view of noncommital, promiscuous love which appears to be attractive. The speaker here lacks the elegance of the subject in "To a Man." Although an appreciable understanding of the motives of the man in "Country Lover" remains illusive, the speaker, an opportunist with women, illustrates the notion of love in the blues that often presupposes that one will have many lovers as in Charley Patton's aphoristic line, "There ain't no one woman got it all," with which Ma Rainey agreed, "You'll get a man anywhere you go" (Levine 280). The physical side of love is strongly depicted in the

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blues. Sexual expression occurs freely as a natural and expected part of life (Levine 279) . The sexual messages in blues songs are often obscene, even by contemporay standards, as seen in obvious metaphors for the sex act (Titon 191). Memphis Minnie, for example, sang, "Sting me bumble bee until I get enough" (qtd. in Titon 191). Levine cites another example of sexual imagery in Memphis Minnie: Won't you be my chauffeur, won't you be my chauffeur? I want someone to drive me, I want someone to drive me downtown. Baby drives so easy I can't turn him down. (243) Similiar to other blues singers who express unashamed sexual enjoyment, in "Remembrance" (indicated in italics "for Paul") Angelou begins with senusous bodily imagery of lovemaking in a frank celebration of sexuality:

Your hands easy weight, teasing the bees hived in my hair, your smile at the slope of my cheek. On the occassion, you press above me, glowing, spouting readiness, mystery rapes my reason. (118) The inevitable separation follows, but the speaker in the

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second stanza ironically revels in the idea of estrangement. The speaker actually finds pleasure in the separation, as she describes her voracious enjoyment of the experience through her memory after her lover is gone. Her memories are undisturbed by the presence of her lover: When you have withdrawn yourself and the magic, when only the smell of your love lingers between my breasts, then, only then, can I greedily consume your presence. (118) Priscilla Ramsey uses this poem and others to argue that Angelou employs fantasy to keep a distance from reality so that her imaginative powers can surface (150) . Further, Ramsey concludes, the persona actually prefers the memory of her lover to his actual presence because, as the autobiographies reveal, Angelou distrusts men and fears physical engulfment by them (150-1). Thus, the persona seeks to confine and control her perception of the lover within her psychic boundaries. Optimism abounds in "Where We Belong, A Duet," a simple poem of intimate love and strength, which reveals that the speaker has previously experienced many short, unfulfilling relationships in the past but has recently met someone who makes her feel strong and gives her a sense of belonging.

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Musical in quality, this poem reads like a sentimental love song. The first three stanzas chronicle the speaker's past blues caused by failed relationships while she searched for someone to love. Her search led her to many places, and she had many encounters, but her attempts always failed. The poem's beginning is shadowed by the speaker's feelings of frustration and disappointment. In schoolrooms, poolrooms and cocktail bars, she was "always easy playing romantic games" with strangers. In dance halls, at social affairs, and on remote country roads, she fell in love many times and attempted to woo and give of herself completely. But the speaker always heard her lovers say good-bye for various, vague reasons: You don't have the proper charms. Too sentimental and much too gentle I don't tremble in your arms.

(120)

In the fourth stanza the speaker tells of the new lover who brings light to the speaker's dark search. The last stanza breaks from the hopeless tone employed in the poem up to this point. Beginning with the transition "then," this last stanza rejoices that someone has come into the speaker's life. Now she is stronger because of the confidence and comfort that this new love, envisioned as a bright sunrise, has given to her: Then you rose into my life

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Like a promised sunrise. Brightening my days with the light in your eyes. I've never been so strong, Now I'm where I belong.

(120)

"Just for a Time," the last poem of Part One, reminisces about an earlier love that the speaker had. This love, "new as a day breaking in Spring," pleased the speaker and caused her to sing. She says that ordinarily she does not like reminiscing "on yesterday's years," but honesty makes her admit that she had the perfect love "for a time. Just for a time." The love is obviously passed, and the speaker encounters the emptiness of lost love, yet she still celebrates the experience and cherishes the memories. One poem in this volume deals with love but occurs in another section. "In Retrospect" occurs in Part Three entitled like the volume, "And Still I Rise." "In Retrospect" recalls the speaker's last year in images of the subtle changing of the seasons. At the time of the changes, the speaker was in love and did not notice the changes, but now she is alone and can remember many details. During the previous years, the lovers were so preoccupied with being in love that they were "above the whim of time" and did not even notice the changing of the seasons. Now, loneliness makes the speaker acutely aware of the passing of time. The strength of this poem is in its simplicity. The subjects of the poems in And Still I Rise are

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nearly as varied as those in Angelou's second volume. Yet, as in the first volume, Angelou places an emphasis on the role of love in human interaction. While the love poems in And Still I Rise acknowledge the risks of pain, this aspect of love is less pronounced than in Angelou's previous volumes. With more self-confidence the speaker in the third volume brazenly dares the risks, then delights in the brief moments of tenderness and fulfillment in the phenomenon of love. V The following five poems deal with love and come from Angelou's fourth volume of poetry, Shaker. Whv Don't You Sina?. a collection which Angelou wrote for Guy Johnson, her son, and Colin Ashanti Murphy Johnson, her grandson. Much of this volume is autobiographical and reveals the nature of Angelou's intimate relationships. Angelou draws on her experiences as a writer in "Impeccable Conception." The speaker in this poem talks about a lady poet who: took for inspiration colored birds, and whispered words, a lover's hesitation.

(182)

In the third stanza she says that the experience of physical love shows her an even truer sense of what love means, and she hastens to make her experience part of her written expression:

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She'd find a hidden meaning in every pair of pants, then hurry home to be alone and write about romance. (182) "Recovery" is a short, two stanza poem that warns of the pain associated with love. According to the speaker, after one has experienced lost love, she should forbid herself further involvements with love. In the second stanza, however, the speaker indicates that she has recovered from her earlier pain and is now able to seek a new relationship with another lover: But I, now, reft of that confusion, am lifted up and speeding toward the light. (181) Thus, the poem both mourns lost love and celebrates new love. Angelou told the Washington Times that this poem refers to the ending of her marriage in 1981 (Walters 3A). In "Prelude to a Parting," the inevitable loss cannot be halted, and the lover must also experience the distressing emotion of fear. The speaker first feels the love wane. Then her lover responds similarily by pulling away from her. The last idea is expressed as a "tacit fact": The awful fear of losing is not enough to cause a fleeing love

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to stay. (191) In "To a Suitor" the speaker asks for the suitor to come to her. The sexual act, symbolic of the emotional union, here is described with vivid imagery: If you are Black and constant, descend importantly, as ritual, and I will arch a crescent moon, naturally.

(194)

The speaker bids her lover to make his move and she will respond. Because her response is natural, the sexual act reinforces her confidence at the end of the poem. In "Prescience" the first four stanzas describe the speaker's pain and loneliness of a lost love. The first stanza begins by describing the unsavory consequences of lost love. The speaker describes the heart breaking "into unrecognizable plots of misery" leaking "its sap, with a vulgar visibility." In the third stanza she describes solitude that can "stifle the breath, loosen the joint, and force the tongue against the palate." The fourth stanza pictures loneliness that engulfs the body "in an ominous and beautiful cicatrix." The turning point of the poem occurs in the fifth stanza when the speaker says that even if she had known about these unpleasant consequences of lost love, she would have still loved the "brash and insolent beauty" and "heavy comedic face" of the person she addresses in the

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poem. But in the final stanza she says she would have maintained a distance and left the lover "whole and wholly for the delectation of those who wanted more and cared less." VI Like her fourth volume, Angelou treats the subject of love briefly in her fifth volume, I Shall Not Be Moved. Angelou's speaker in these poems shows evidence of the poet's maturity: she appears older and wiser. She now treats love differently. With experience, Angelou gains a keener awareness of life and love, and she speaks with much assurance. More than any of the previous volumes, Angelou assumes a mother-like voice that comments on subjects, including love, from a deliberate feminine perspective. Yet, she maintians that love is necessary for survival— personal love, romantic love, and self-love. Removing the focus from the individual to the universal, Angelou comments on our world as having an inadequate amount of love. In the first stanza of "Is Love," the speaker sings the blues that "birthing is hard and dying is mean and living's a trial in between." She charges that without love we wander aimlessly in a world that has much pain. Angelou suggests here that a lack of love is responsible for the hardness of life: Why do we journey, muttering like rumors among the stars?

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Ill

Is a dimension lost? Is it love? (8) In "Loss of Love" a more mature speaker comments with assurance on the notion of loss, specifically the loss of love and the loss of youth. She recognizes and acknowledges the evidence of her lost youth: thickened waist and leathery thighs, which triumph over my fallen insouciance.

(41)

At age fifty-five her life and her experiences have changed, and she raises the questions: Is the battle worth the candle?

Is this war worth the rage? In this final, rhetorical question, Angelous expresses her desire to grow old with dignity, and she hopes that she will accept the daily challenge she meets so her life has value: May I not greet age without a grouse, allowing the truly young to own the stage? (5)

Angelou asserts the possibility of finding a satisfying relationship and instructs her readers to continue the quest. In "In My Missouri" the speaker begins describing a man she knew in Missouri who was mean, hard and cold. She thought she would never meet a sweet, kind and

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true man, "one who in darkness you can feel secure" with. But in Jackson, Mississippi, she met some fine, strong men, "walking like an Army," and in Oberlin, Ohio, she met some nice, fair men, "reaching out and healing." Her experiences showed her that there are good and bad men, "true men and rough men". She addresses women to keep searching for the good men. "They Ask Why"

is composed

of two stanzas in whichthe

speaker explains to the reader facets of her life which "a certain person" wondered about. The first stanza makes a social statement as the speaker justifies why she, a "big strong girl," is on the welfare system. She cannot find

a

job that would sustain her needs: Even minimal people Can't survive on minimal wage.

(46)

The second stanza justifies her feelings for her lover, although she admits that words fall short of a true depiction in her: I said you had the motion of the ocean in your walk, and when you solve my riddles you don't even have to talk.

(46)

VII Angelou's love poetry, like blues love songs, reflects certain African-American sensibilities and attitudes. Angelou is just one of many African-American lyricists who

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asserts a blues voice that audaciously admits and confronts the sources of pain— in this case, pain associated with love relationships. The language of these poems may appear to some to lack complexity; however, it is the language of the blues— a language capable of communicating the emptiness caused by lost love and other woes with simplicity and resourceful wit. In addition, Angelou's love poetry, as in her autobiographies and her other works, stresses that the voicing of one's troubles helps to channel negative feelings while at the same time it allows one to better understand how to respond to an adverse situation. She informs readers with a realistic view of the subject of love, much different from the idealistic view so often accepted by the popular culture. The love relationships presented in Angelou's poems are not necessarily exclusive to the African-American experience. She does, however, use the African-American blues mode to convey her sentiments of this human condition that so much art addresses. Through this study, I have found that Angelou successfully captures the lyrical quality of the blues in her treatment of the subject of love.

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CHAPTER FIVE A VOICE OF PROTEST I'd rather drink muddy water sleep in a hollow log I'd rather drink muddy water sleep in a hollow log Than to be in Atlanta treated like a dog.

(qtd. in Titon 184)

In his standard work on African-American folk music, Nearo Folk Music. Harold Courlander states that "the blues have provided a convenient outlet for protest against racial injustice" (qtd. in Titon 136). Jeff Todd Titon argues that even some of the blues love songs that depict the "cheater" in a relationship may allegorically symbolize the deception found in race relations (191-2) . Historically, African-American secular songs often involved protest, as their singers could candidly verbalize in song what could not be expressed in public. Although the blues has not been the dominant vehicle for protest, defiant discontent and protest sentiments are clearly evident in some blues songs (Levine 276). The above example of "Fo' Day Blues" by Charlie Patton typifies the incorporation of protest into blues lyrics (note 1). Like the writing of most African Americans, virtually all of Maya Angelou's work bears social and political significance. This chapter examines those specific poems where Angelou employs her verse to voice

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personal emotions of anger and rage to protest the racial oppression and social problems that have plaqued her and many other African Americans. A reviewer for Choice magazine (1972), commenting on her first volume, says that the "bitterly angry poems expressing the will to survive of a strong woman" are the most effective of the book (210). Subjects and themes of Angelou's protest poems recur in three main areas: 1) the enduring pain of slavery; 2) contemporary problems particularly related to poor African Americans; and 3) the hypocrisy of those who perpetuate false notions of the American ideal. Angelou identifies the sense of responsibility she feels to voice, through her art, social concerns and issues, especially those which are unpleasant. In "Artful Pose," the speaker, a writer, admits that her conscience propels her to write of the ugliness of life in addition to writing about life's beauties. She begins the poem using the pleasing images that

some poets use to sing their "sweet melodies":

Of falling leaves and melting snows, of birds in their delight

tendering my nights sweetly.

(84)

The speaker's writing, however, cannot take "that quiet

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path" at all times because she feels the "need to write / of lovers false / and hate / and hateful wrath." The rhythm of the poems accelerates in the last half, reinforcing the quick manner in which she writes of life's ugliness. Addressing painful truths is difficult for her as evidenced by the quickness, but she accepts the challenge. Two poems deal with personal quilt for allowing injustices to continue because of silence or fear. In "We Saw Beyond Our Seeming," the speaker laments that in the past she "aided in the killing" by denying the truth of "children dying bloated" and "men all noosed and dangling." She says, "We knew and lied our knowing." Because the speaker has not tried to fight against the system, she feels partly responsible for it. In a similar way, the speaker in "My Guilt" feels shame because her pride has kept her from becoming a martyr: My crime is "heroes, dead and gone" dead Vessey, Turner, Gabriel, dead Malcolm, Marcus, Martin King. They fought too hard, they loved too well. My crime is I'm alive to tell.

My sin lies in not screaming loud.

(44)

The strong self-indictment here explains Angelou's obligation to write poems that voice protest.

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I

According to LeRoi Jones in Blues People, the knowledge of the existence of slavery informs the most meaningful African-American music (136). Many of Angelou's poems make allusions to the past enslavement and oppression of Africans and African Americans in the United States and the embedded pain that the present generation continues to feel because of that history. For instance, the speaker of "The Memory" vividly describes the suffering endured by slaves such as tortuous labor, severe beatings, and deprivations of food, clothing, and shelter. A reviewer for the Los Angeles Times aptly describes this poem as "a brief and wrenching cry of a slave's mortification with the lond-dead voice like a stinging remembrance in the poet's blood" (Scwartz C8). Throughout the poem, Angelou illustrates the agony and shame of the slave through powerful images: Dead-tired nights of yearning Thunderbolts on leather strops And all my body burning

And every baby crying.

(151)

Similarily, "Slave Coffle" offers a poignant illustration of a slave's feelings upon realization that slavery had robbed her of her life. The speaker can see freedom just beyond her reaching, but she cannot attain it. The speaker describes

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her enslavement with dark images. The reference to China explains how the speaker views her enslavement as all-encompassing: Now Beneath my walking, solid down to China, all the earth is horror and the dark night long.

(207)

"My Arkansas" also reminds the reader of the South's unforgivable sins associated with the institution of slavery. In this poem, Arkansas, where Angelou and her only brother, Bailey, spent most of their childhood years, brings her painful memories. In the first stanza the beauty of the moss in poplar trees cannot be enjoyed because the red clay constantly reminds the speaker of the blood shed by her people in the South. In the second stanza even the sunrise loses its "incandescent aim" while "the past is brighter yet" (134). The final stanza continues to explain that the present "is yet to come" because Arkansas "writhes in awful waves of brooding" of the past and the old hates will not cease. In "Kin," subtitled "for Bailey," Angelou explores the intricacies of her familial relationship with her brother. The poem weaves together accounts from their childhood with sketches of the Arkansas landscape. In the final stanza, she employs the pleasing image of fireflies, but for Angelou the fireflies also symbolize the larger explosions she remembers from her childhood in Arkansas:

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Regions of terror and bloody Screams, race my heart. I hear again the laughter Of children and see fireflies Bursting tiny explosion in An Arkansas twilight.

(150)

The most powerful poem about slavery and the South is "Miss Scarlett, Mr. Rhett and Other Latter-Day Saints." This poem contains an abundance of irony, first in the use of language associated with Christian rituals to discuss physical abuse of black slaves by white slaveowners. Irony further derives from the actual historical situations where whites avowed both their belief in Christian doctrine and the right to own, neglect, and even abuse black slaves. The speaker alternates religious images with beatings and murders, sometimes of black children, to show that the two coexisted in a paradoxical relationship. For instance, in the middle of the poem she sings both "hosanna" and "King Kotton." In a similar way she juxtaposes blood and gall with etched frescoes, and novena with: Charred bones of four very small very black very young children.

(31)

As the title suggests, the speaker alludes to the theatrical

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version of Margaret Mitchell's fiction, Gone With the Wind, using Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler as examples of actual plantation owners who claimed to be Christian but could not see their most obvious sins against their slaves. Instead, some Christians, here referred to as Latter-Day Saints, viewed the Miss Scarletts as pure and the Mr. Rhetts as martyrs. The poem ends using verbal irony to protest the perpetuation of false ideals excused by and even defended by Christianity. II David Evans explains that blues do not often deal directly with racial discrimination. Instead the subject matter of the lyrics focuses on the problems caused by it (29). Samuel Charters cites the following example from Memphis Minnie's repertoire in which she comments on the social situations around her during the 1930s and 1940s: The peoples on the highway Is walkin' and cryin', Some is starvin', some is dyin' . . . .

(95)

In a similar way, Angelou writes a number of poems concerned with the contemporary social problems she sees, such as poverty, violence, drug abuse, child abuse, and homelessness. As Baker points out, an accurate analysis of African-American literature must take into account the political economy that conditions the living and laboring of African Americans (Blues. Ideology 13). With this

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consideration in mind, the somber tone of the art can be understood and better appreciated in Angelou and other blues artisans who use their lyrics to reflect on and to voice personal laments, as well as public songs of protest. In several poems Angelou graphically depicts the devastation caused by drug abuse. The poem, "Junkie Monkey Reel," warns that when the body is abused by drugs such as heroin as described in the clauses, "Shoulders sag . . . Arms drag . . . Knees thaw . . . teeth rock . . . Eyes dart, die . . . [and] Brains reel"; life has no quality to give it meaning, and "Dreams fail" (130). The speaker asks, "How long will / This monkey dance?" to imply that the junkie expedites his own death. This last rhetorical question also indicts the reader to find a solution for this social problem. Angelou writes from an informed position as seen in her second autobiography, Gather Together in Mv Name, which includes her own experiences as a drug abuser. Angelou reveals her attitude toward drug dealers. Her treatment of this contemporary subject is analogous to that of some early downhome blues (note 2). In "The Pusher" the speaker refers to her man as the pusher, a man who frightens the white man; he "make[s] a honky's blue eyes squint anus tight, when my man look in the light blue eyes." His sleekness reminds her of Congo mornings. People on the street notice the pusher. They wonder about him and even envy him and his power on the

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street. The pusher, however, causes destruction of young lives. He is seen as "badder than death," and as the speaker indicates in the end of the poem, he provides no true or "sweet" release. Her poem, "Letter to an Aspiring Junkie," explores the social problem of drug abuse among African Americans. Through this poem, Angelou presents a critique of some of the evils that African Americans face in inner-urban areas. With street slang the speaker of the poem addresses a potential drug user named Jim to inform him about life in the street. From her informative perspective, she tells him three times that "ain't nothing happening" in the streets. In her appeal to Jim to avoid the streets, she catalogs depressing images: Some tomorrows gone up in smoke, raggedy preachers, telling a joke to lonely, son-less old ladies' maids.

A worn-out pimp with a space-age conk, setting up some fool for a game of tonk, or poker or get 'em dead and alive.

(28-29)

She beseeches Jim to avoid becoming addicted to drugs, especially cocaine that she calls "that cold, white horse." She uses the colloquial expression for addiction, a monkey on one's back, to warn of the trickery involved in

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convincing young people that drugs are their answer. The persona also sends a message about the hardness of living in the streets in general. Not only are there drugs, but also loneliness, poverty, violence, prostitution, and gambling. Any sense of optimism dissipates in the face of these social problems that plaque many African Americans. She warns Jim not to enter the streets because the dangers are deadly: The streets? Climb into the streets man, like you climb into the ass end of a lion.

That's the streets man, Nothing happening.

(29)

Angelou employs the blues-style epigrammatic message, "nothing happening," throughout the poem, emphasizing that nothing worthwhile can be achieved by streetlife. The destructive force of another social evil, violence, is depicted in the poem, "Riot: 60's," which describes a burning riot from two perspectives. The black neighborhood watches the burning of the fires, what they see as "a glorious blaze," with admiration because these poor tenants now feel they are being compensated for the inadequate conditions imposed on them by absentee landlords. On the other hand, white policemen and national guard members see the riot as an opportunity to shoot a "nigga" while he is

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running. The fires for them provide lighting for their hunt; the light is likened to a new star. Angelou concludes that the black community cannot fight back against the system because their lives are "tied to a [white] policeman's whistle [and] a [white] welfare worker's doorbell finger" (37) . Angelou invokes sympathy in the poem, "John J.", a work that delves into the issue of child abuse and neglect. John J. is a boy who has no identity as the lack of a last name indicates. He experiences lingering pain because his mother abandoned him, and he can never forget this. Before the realization of his demise, his eyes reflect excitement and life. Now, his childhood "right" has gone wrong; he has no security of family. Ironically, others couldn't resist him. Old women comment that he is "pretty enough to be a girl." His teachers feel the same way, and as an adult he finds acceptance by barroom women, but none of these affections matter to John J. because all he can think about is that his mother did not want him. He attempts to escape through drinking and gambling. He has no resolution about his mother, and Angelou underscores his nagging frustrations and pain with the parenthetical message, "(But his momma didn't want him)" (97). In the same way, the reminder of his mother's abandonment pervades John J.'s entire existence. Lynn Bloom mentions this poem in her article in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as an example of how

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Angelou deals with social issues, here with the plight of abandoned black children (10). Sandra Gilbert suggests that this might be a "portrait in verse" of Angelou's brother Bailey (297). Lack of economic opportunity is a major cause of the problems dealt with in the blues (Evans 20). In "When I Think About Myself," the speaker cries out against a system that supports the economic oppression of blacks by whites. The persona is a sixty-year-old poor black woman who works as a maid for a very young white woman who addresses her as "girl." As a defense mechanism to dismiss her suffering, she ironically laughs at herself and the life of lack that she endures. She likens her life to "a dance that's walked [and] a song that's spoke" (26). She laughs also at the injustices suffered by her family members who have been denied the fruits of their arduous labors which produce abundant crops for the white landowner while her family barely survives on the scraps. But this "laughter" chokes the speaker and causes her stomach to sink. Then the laughter gives over to crying. Even though the speaker unquestionably suffers pain from the social injustices, she perserveres, "Too proud to bend / Too poor to break." Priscilla Ramsey says the speaker laughs at the political and social injustices in order to achieve emotional distance (144-5). She also sees this poem as "a self-defining function" for the poet (144) . Even

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though the speaker of the poem cries at the end, she does not surrender to self-pity. Many of Angelou's protest poems (and almost all of the poems in Part Two of Cool Drink) center on the theme of one's self-exultation and self-pride that prevent one from losing her will in spite of experiences involving pain and degradation. The speaker in "Starvation," a victim of abject poverty, apostrophizes "good news" to come to her. Images of empty pots, bread bins and ovens signal the deprivation she has known: Hunger has grown old and ugly with me. We hate from too much knowing.

(189)

She asks for the "good news" to come and replace the starvation in her children's bellies. As Baker points out, the blues expressiveness reflects the economics of African-American life and its resulting deprivations. The blues art itself provides a strategy for the singer to negotiate her living conditions and the "economics of slavery" (Blues. Ideology 27-29). A perpetual sense of degradation that robs one of the usual joys in life is conveyed in "I Almost Remember." The speaker says that it has been a long time since she has smiled or laughed. She has been affected by the constant sadness on the news each night. Hatred and disdain consume the speaker's life. On late evenings when quietness comes to

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her, she seems to remember a time when she smiled. The use of the copulative in the last lines suggests that she cannot really remember smiling because the pain is too deep and is always there: On late evenings when quiet inhabits my garden when grass sleeps and streets are only paths for silent mist

I seem to remember

Smiling.

(93)

"No No No No" contains the lyrics of the title of the volume which comment on the extreme naivete and innocence of humans, noting that someone who was about to be executed would ask for a cool drink of water at the instant before death and expect to receive it. Ramsey described this poem as a "prophetic message" for whites to "stop the assault on Black people and recognize their humanity'

(142) . The poem

begins with disgusting images of "the two-legg'd beasts that walk like men / [and] play stink finger in their crusty asses" in the first stanza (40) . The speaker says "No" to these beasts who are responsible for the conflict in Vietnam during the 1960's and 1970's that killed and tortured

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innocent babies with napalm. The innocent babies in the poem stretch their mouths believing that they will receive "a cool drink of water" before they die. Angelou, with her adult awareness, exposes the harsh truth of a system that fails to recognize the humanity of other races. In the second stanza she calls America: The gap legg'd whore of the eastern shore enticing Europe to COME in her.

(40)

Her people must take Europe's "pigeon shit," even as workers on European-owned ships. She says "No" to the political system that denies the privileges generally associated with America to her people even though her people "stoked the coal that drove the ships" to America. In the third stanza, the speaker says "No" to a group of white women, and she mocks their language to expose their hypocrisy. They ostensibly are sensitive to the problems of African Americans, while they rejoice that they will never be black. The white women conclude that there is nothing more that they can do to help blacks. They have accepted the hate of black men; they allowed black "mammies" to steal from their kitchens; and, they petted the heads of black children. In their "cocktailed afternoons" in a "white layer pink world" they rejoice that they will never be black. The fourth stanza says "No" to the "red-shoed priests riding

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palanquined" who represent the indifference of churches who watch mothers sift through waste to find food for their children. The speaker then explains that she has waited long enough: On the back porches of forever in the kitchens and fields of rejections. . . .

(42)

She now calls for the white man to accept her people as part of humanity. Now she has no hope that the hurtful insults will cease and that love will unite all people in some way. Her hopes and dreams for harmony are gone. She knows that continued strife will cause the death of the oppressors, yet she has no pity for them. Angelou implores her readers to take a moment, or a month, to "feel some sorrow" for those in desperation and to "show some kindness" to them. At the same time Angelou sees the need to fervently seek solutions for the social problems explored in her protest poems. In "Take Time Out," the speaker asks,

What is causing the "warring and

jarring," the "killing and thrilling,” the "beating and cheating," the "bleeding and needing," the "lying and dying," the "running and gunning," the "fearing and jeering," and the crying and lying" (104-106)? The hippies of the seventies described here, the Vietnam Conflict, the

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prevalent use of drugs, and the number of wanderers all symbolize the trouble of the times. The real tragedy is that the youth are "dying on the run." Repetitively, Angelou implores us to "take time out" to discover viable strategies to combat the social ills that plague u s . Ill Houston Baker uses the term, AMERICA, to refer to a literary-critical and literary-theoretical discourse that inscribes the idea of a "boundless, classless, raceless" possibility in America (Blues. Ideology 65). The blues displays an "awesome luminescence," though for only a brief instance at the railroad juncture, that enables one to understand and acknowledge the role of the African American in American history (65-66). Blues protest lyrics are important because they mirror the attitudes and conditions of the speaker and they expose false, idealized values and mores of American society. In the poem, "America," the speaker cries for a more accurate depiction of America to expose what many see as the truth. She challenges the reader to "discover this country" because the promises of abundance and justice are merely "legends untrue" like the mythology of the Old South that portrayed a benevolent, patriarchal slaveowner as kind and well-meaning. In this poem the speaker alters the traditional framework of American history that assumes the incomplete view of AMERICA. Angelou's view--that the United States has not acheived the ideals it

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has perpetuated-- subjects traditional American history, shaped and limited by ideology and/or imagination, to a radical reinterpretation

The speaker indicates the urgency

by begging the reader to "Discover this country." As Angelou points out in the poem, the biggest paradox in the traditional view of American history or ideology is its failure to acknowledge that the system of capitalism, the major belief in American ideals, had been denied to slaves who could not negotiate their labor: Her crops.of- abundance the fruit and the grain Have not fed the hungry nor eased that deep pain . . . .

(78)

Like the previous poem, "Request" is another indictment of American ideals. With harsh and even vulgar imagery, the speaker of this short poem refers to America as a bastard and requests the country to acknowledge the African American, "his love child," and declare the African American's legitimacy. Again, Angelou's poem provokes a reinterpretation of AMERICA to include the influences and contributions of the African American. "These Yet To Be United States," like the two previously discussed poems, exposes false ideals of AMERICA. This poem succinctly illustrates Baker's positing of an African-American voice in art, in particular the blues, that

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makes "existential declarations of lack . . . with lustily macabre prophecies" of the African-American demise (5). The speaker points out that the United States is powerful enough to control lives all over the world with its economic, military, and technological power, yet the citizens of the United States are suffering and longing for something. She asks: What more do you long for? Why are you suffering?

Why are you unhappy? Why do your children cry?

(21)

She sees the future for the children of the United States as grim, full of dread, terror and sadness. She exposes how the false ideals, which "dwell in whitened castles with deep and poisoned moats," supercede the cries from the children. In "Equality" the speaker views the small successes that have occured through the African American's struggle for equality as dim, faint changes that have not produced equality or freedom. The first half of the poem addresses those in power who could affect a system of equality, but they actually affect only minute changes. They respond to the African American's goals of social, political, and economic equality in a way that further supports the inequality that many African Americans have faced. The speaker reveals their perception of the African-American as

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a shadow to them as the cause of their inability to clearly understand the African-American struggle. The second half of this poem commands a more powerful response. The speaker calls for those in power to heed her cries: Take the blinders from your vision, take the padding from your ears, and confess you've heard me crying, and admit you've seen my tears.

(12-13)

The speaker repeats three times the following plea that only with equality can she be free: Equality, and I will be free. Equality, and I will be free. Throughout the poem Angelou uses images of soldiers marching for their cause to the rhythm of the drums that beat out their message. She reinforces the idea that the rhythm never changes, indicationg that the quest for equality has not been realized. Angelou exposes the causative factor of indifference in the following two poems. "Through the Inner City to the Suburbs"

takes the reader on a train ride wherethewindows

offer picture frames beginning

in a black section of

the

inner city and moving to the suburbs where there are "green lawns / Double garages and sullen women" (13 6) . The people on the train witness suffering of those in the inner city,

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but like many people, they turn their head away in indifference. In the first stanza the soot in the city from polluting industries is pictured as delicious frosting, and the black people in this area live their lives ritualistically. They grin as if they are amused. The speaker calls them "precious. Stolen gems / Unsaleable and dear" (135). Those in power are separated from the scene as if the train windows imposed some unpenetratable barrier, yet politicians profess to try to help with the needs of the poor. However, as they talk of providing necessities, in the same breath they boast of having a "colored Mammy." This comment only perpetuates attitudes that hinder true understanding of the inner city plights. Ironically, in the last stanza the "dark figures" in the inner city continue to grin and dance, oblivious to the train and its destination. Like the previous poem, "Lady Luncheon Club" exposes the insensitivity of upperclass groups who believe they are helping those in need. The serious tone of the first stanza leads the reader to believe the ladies' club has good intentions when they invite a speaker "who would make them think" (137) . The affluent group pays him from the "petty cash" funds. "Our woman" as the speaker refers to her, is overly-concerned with the dessert when the speaker begins his delivery. He is effective as a speaker and also appears to be sincere: "He summons up / Sincerity as one might call a favored / Pet" (137). He understands much about the women

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he is addressing, but they do not understand him. They do not even try. While the lecturer speaks of rape and death, "Our woman" thinks about the cake being too sweet and the coffee being too strong. She really does not want to be confronted with the distressing reminders of social dilemmas such as joblessness and alcoholism often associated with poverty. Sadly, the wisdom of the club's speaker, which can potentially lead to solutions for social problems, escapes "Our Woman." During the lecture, she makes a note that the next speaker should be brief. "Our woman" refuses to even acknowledge the problems, especially her own contribution to them. In conclusion, like a common blues message, hope is on the horizon, and the speaker is looking to a brighter future, but the desired hope in the poems discussed here is always in the future. In "On a Bright Day, Next Week," a poem in which Angelou makes a statement of faith that God's mercy will come to her "just before the world ends," and then her suffering will cease. "On a bright day next week / Just before the bomb falls / Just before the world ends," her tears will dry, and the mercy of the heavens will fall from the sky on the children of the earth (27) . Presently Angelou, as the blues singer, is forced to acknowledge and deal with the tragedies, frustrations, and disappointments, in many cases imposed by irrational hate and prejudice,

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experienced in African-American life.

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CHAPTER SIX FINAL ASSESSMENTS Houston Baker, Jr. concludes

Blues. Ideology, and

Afro-American Literature by identifying the task of scholars and critics of African-American literature to orient themselves in vernacular experience "inventively and daringly" in order to provide informed analyses that elucidate the presence of culturally specific artistic devices (202). Baker's theoretical articulation of a blues matrix frame of reference provides a viable tool for the scholarly critic to understand and explain African-American literature. I have attempted in my foregoing discussions to employ Baker's theory of a blues matrix operating as force and code in African-American consciousness to discover and analyze instances in Maya Angelou's poetry that reflect blues related influences on her artistic expression. Baker's re-oriented reading of African-American literature enables us to understand some of the culturally specific strengths of Angelou's poetry that have been neglected by most previous critics: some of her poetry does, in fact, reflect an influence of the blues. In particular, this study has shown how Angelou's poetry exemplifies certain structural and thematic characteristics of blues lyrics.

As outlined in Chapter Three, a number of Angelou's poems contain structural and rhythmic patterns similar to traditional blues form, and these results appear to further

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validate Baker's posture that a blues mode of expression conditions African-American literature. While the study indicates that the fundamental AAB or AAA blues formula and the "call and response" pattern used in many blues songs are evident, such parallels can be readily observed in only a few of Angelou's poems. However, the study finds more notable similarities existing between a number of Angelou's poems and the structural characteristics of the antebellum work song, a secular music form which has strongly influenced the basic structure of the blues from the inception of early blues up to the present. Such a comparison allows the critic to locate the specific strengths of a poet within the rhetorical tradition of her culture. Thus, the comparative analysis here leads me to conclude that as Angelou comments on contemporary concerns in her verse, she displays special talent and artistry in creating rhythmic effects that accurately capture the mood and feel of the earlier work song. A thematic approach in Chapter Four reveals that Angelou's poetry strongly resembles the blues in her treatment of love, the most prominent subject of the blues. As in many blues lyrics, those interacting in love relationships in Angelou's poems almost invaribly experience a degree of suffering, especially when the emotion of love ceases or changes. The loneliness and resulting pain of lost

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romance often culminate in profound feelings of melancholy and despair for the speaker. The blue mood and spirit of the grieving lover in Angelou's poems may at first appear overwhelmingly self-defeating, but like the blues singer who laments lost love through her song, Angelou releases her negative feelings through the actual acknowledgment and voicing of her blues in verse. Thus, Angelou's love poems operate as a cathartic tool for the poet and her reader in the same manner that the blues song provides a vehicle for relief for the blues singer and her audience. In addition, this examination of the treatment of love in Angelou's poetry in relation to traditional blues lyrics reveals a common frankness and openness in the way many African-American artists view the subject of love. Some readers might consider the emphasis on pain and loneliness as excessive negativism. Actually, the cynicism expressed through the poems here, reinforced by constant reminders of unpleasant possibilities that can occur in love related experiences, points to a culturally specific view of love which is much different from that of the white popular culture. In particular, the subject of love in Angelou, as in the blues, is examined without illusions. For instance, the love poems here scope such topics as infidelity, desertion, physical abuse, and sexual abuse. The attempt by the poet to realistically depict problematic man/woman relationships gives the reader a wide perspective on the

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subject of love. In this way the poet, like the blues singer, conveys information and instruction based on folk experience. The most affirming message expressed through a collective knowledge is that the ending of a love relationship, though painful, does not constitute the end of one's life. Like the writing of most African Americans, virtually all of Maya Angelou's work bears social and political significance. Angelou has explained in her work and in interviews that she considers part of her role as a writer is to address and protest the racial oppression and social problems that plague many African Americans. The poems discussed in Chapter Five demonstrate how Angelou incorporates protest themes in her verse in the same way as noted blues singers. Specifically, the study here focuses on three recurring subjects: 1) the lasting pain of slavery on African Americans; 2) contemporary social problems such as poverty, violence, drug abuse, child abuse, and homelessness; and, 3) the hypocrisy in the AMERICAN ideal. The analyses of Angelou's protest poems offer the most cogent examples of Baker's theory of the conditioning effects of "political economy" on the living and laboring of African Americans. Throughout these poems, Angelou boldly indicts the persons and systems responsible for the social ills that she writes about. The poet strives to discover

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solutions to the problems, and she implores her readers to probe their social consciences and to be more sensitive to the needs of their fellow humans. In my overall reading of Angelou's poetry, I find thematic blues instances throughout the five volumes and most frequently in the first and third volumes. While in much of Angelou's poetry there exists a blues spirit, Angelou's work is not exclusively blues orientated. An examinaton of all of the poems reveals enormous variety in subject, style, theme, and use of vernacular elements. This conspicuous multiplicity is not surprising for Angelou, as it mirrors the varied life of a gifted writer who has a broad scope of experience and who has achieved success through numerous artistic avenues. Baker's blues matrix theory has offered a valuable approach in understanding structural and thematic parallels in this study. Yet, it is important to note that a blues theory fails as an all-encompassing literary-theoretical approach for examining the whole of Angelou's poetry. My initial aim was to demonstrate and offer delineations throughout all or mostly all of Angelou's poetry, but a blues theory proves to be inadequate for explaining a number of Angelou's poems, in particular those resembling the spirituals and those which assert the "phenomenal woman" persona often seen in the autobiographies. Therefore, the study has led me to conclude that blues influences

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constitute only one aspect of the vernacular force present in African-American literature. I conclude that what some critics have viewed as simple folk expression in Angelou's poetry represents how African-American vernacular language operates as a meaningful vein in cultural work. Thus, Angelou's poetry not only speaks of important themes, it also contributes to the preservation and on-going communication of vernacular culture. While I agree that we can better ascertain Angelou's poetry with a theoretical basis grounded in particular African-American vernacular terms, the complexity and diversity of her poetry calls for a more comprehensive vernacular model as force and code in African-American cultural expressions. This model would include the influences of other veins of the vernacular such as sacred songs, folk lore, folk humor, dialect, and Signifyin(g). A more inclusive vernacular framework would enable the critic to examine a more substantial number of Angelou's poems.

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NOTES CHAPTER ONE 1 Angelou explains her name change in Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merrv Like Christmas. When Angelou began her career as a nightclub performer, friends encouraged her to choose a stage name. She chose "Maya" from the nickname her younger brother had given her in their childhood. He began calling her "My sister;" then he called her "My," and finally "Maya." For her second name she used a variation of her married name "Angelos" by dropping the "s" and adding a "u." The pronunciation is Angeloo (84). 2 For this study the poems in the first four volumes of Angelou's poetry will be cited from Mava Anaelou: Poems (Bantam, 1986 edition), an unabridged collection of Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie. Oh Prav Mv Winas Are Gonna Fit Me Well. And Still I Rise, and Shaker. Whv Don't You Sina? Poems in I Shall Not Be Moved will be cited from the Bantam, 1991 edition. 3 Angelou told Claudia Tate in an 1983 interview that in the first autobiography she envisioned the young Maya as a symbolic character for every black girl growing up in America. Her reference to the "Maya character" signifies a distance between the author and the particular events and influences that shaped the young Maya. She maintains this distance, she says, to avoid indulgence (3). Angelou also discusses maintaining a distance between the "Maya character" in her work and herself as an author in Jackie Kay's interview for Marxism Today (September 1987). Angelou admits that the difficulty in writing autobiography lies in maintaining the necessary distance: "The person I was yesterday is not exactly the same as the person today, understandably. So if that is so, then the person I wrote about 20 years ago knew only that (italics) much. Now writing today, about somebody 20 years ago, one has to impose a kind of distance, otherwise I will imbue that person with the wisdom I have today" (rpt. in Elliot 195). 4 Maya Angelou's autobiographies have enjoyed a fair amount of critical attention, some of which are briefly reviewed here. Stephen Butterfield in Black Autobiography in America traces the development of black autobiography and discusses the embodiment of the black experience in the depiction of the revolutionary self. He focuses on the white influence on the language of black autobiographers. Chapter 10 discusses Maya Angelou's I Know Whv the Caged Bird Sings (1970), Ida Wells's Crusade for Justice (1928), and Anne Moody's Coming of Age in Mississippi.

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Butterfield draws parallels in Angelou's first autobiography and Richard Wright's Black Bov. He notes Angelou's use of humor and female role models as the primary differences. Joanne M. Braxton in Black Women Writing Autobiography: A Tradition Within a Tradition argues for a redefinition of black autobiography to include the female's image. She also suggests the uniqueness of the female's autobiogrpahy. In the final chapter of this book, "Maya Angelou: A Song of Transcendence," Braxton discusses the influence of the powerful women who nurture and protect Marguerite Johnson in Angelou's Caged Bird. Selwyn R. Cudjoe's article "Maya Angelou and the Autobiographical Statement" examines the characteristics of African-American autobiography using Angelou's first three autobiographies as examples. He concludes that Angelou makes an important statement about what it means to be black and female in contemporary America. Cudjoe's "Maya Angelou: The Autobiographical Statement Updated" elaborates on his earlier work to include all of Angelou's autobiographies. Keneth Kinnamon in "Call and Response: Intertexutality in Two Autobiographical Works by Richard Wright and Maya Angelou" shows the similarities of the two works and also argues that gender differences are evident. Sondra 0'Neale's article "Reconstructing of the Composite Self: New Images of Black Women in Maya Angelou's Continuing Autobiography" discusses the new image of black women which challenges the existing stereotypes. Sidonie A. Smith's article "The Song of a Caged Bird: Maya Angelou's Quest after Self-Acceptance" treats the imprisoning environment of Angelou and her movement toward self-worth in Caaed Bird. Smith's book Where I 'm Bound: Patterns of Slavery and Freedom in American Autobiography traces the development of black autobiography. Chapter Six: "Black Womanhood" examines the psychological and emotional dimensions explored in Caaed Bird. George E. Kent's "Maya Angelou's I Know Whv the Caaed Bird Sinas and the Black Autobiographical Tradition" discusses Caaed Bird and its place in the development of the genre of black autobiography. According to Kent, the uniqueness of Angelou's autobiography can be seen in "its special stance toward the self, the community, and the universe, and by a form exploiting the full measure of imagination necessary to acknowledge both beauty and absurdity" (75). 5 A topical review of the dissertations written about Angelou again shows the autobiographies as the primary interest to the critical community. Estella Conwill Alexander's "Tell Them So You'll Know" considers the process of autobiography as a reconciliation of the present self

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with the remembered past— between objective fact and subjective awareness— in the works of seven black women. Uma Kuppuswami Alladi's "Woman and Her Family: Indian and Afro-Amrican: A Literary Perspective" is a bicultural study that examines nine writers and focuses on the position of the woman in the family and the role of woman in culture and literature. Joanne Margaret Braxton's "Autobiography By Black American Women: A Tradition Within A Tradition" identifies the autobiography of black American women as a tradition. Angelou's Caaed Bird is discussed in the last chapter because it exemplifies the archetypal patterns and content established in earlier narratives by black American women. Jerome P. De Romanet's "The Narrative Creation of Self in the Fiction by African-American and African-Caribbean Women Writers" examines the works of six authors whose works are shaped by sexual, racial and social marginalization. Joyce L. Graham's "Freeing Maya Angelou's 'Caged Bird'" attempts to show Caaed Bird as a worthy literary work for classroom consideration. It gives detailed information about the book's commercial and critical reception and about its censorship challenges. Shirley Hodge Hardin's "Reconciled and Unreconciled Strivings: A Thematic and Structural Study of the Autobiographies of Four Black Women" discusses structures and themes of Angelou's first four autobiographies and the works of Gwendolyn Brooks, Lorraine Hansberry, and Zora Neale Hurston. Edward R. Heidt's "Narrative Voice in Autobiographical Writing" studies autobiographical elements in terms of mimetic/diegetic voices which constitute autobiographical writing (autobiographies proper, memoirs, and confessions) as a single genre in its own right. Elwanda Deloris Ingram's "Black Women: Literary Self-Portraits" seeks to disprove the long-accepted stereotypes of the black female and attempts to show that black female characters are actually multidimensional. Francoise Lionnet-McCumber's "Autobiographical Tongues: (Self-) Reading and (Self-) Writing in Augustine, Nietzche, Maya Angelou, Marie Cardinal, and Marie-Therese Humbert (Metissage, Emancipation, Female Textuality, Self-Portraiture, Autoethnography)" analyzes the cross-cultural linguistic mechanisms working in the writers indicated in the title. Barbara Ann McCaskill"s "To Rise Above Race: Black Women Writers and Their Readers, 1859-1939" examines the ways that black American women writers have molded their works to the expectations of their readers and reviewers. She sees Angelou, as well as other post-World War II autobiographers (Thompson, Brooks, Giovanni) at the beginning of a new tradition that favors openendedness and

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twoness. Dolly A. McPherson's "Order Out of Chaos: The Autobiographical Works of Maya Angelou" traces the emergence of the character through the first four autobiographies. Elizabeth Ann Peterson's "A Phenomenological Investigation of Self-will and Its Relationship to Success in African-American Women" focuses on the emergence of self-will in African-American women. Kristi Ellen Siegel's "Mother/Body/Text and Women's Autobiography" focuses on the figure of the mother in women's autobiographies. Myra Cozad Unger's "The Treatment of Childhood in Autobiographies of Twentieth Century American Women" discusses role models in Angelou and Margaret Mead. Marie Solomon Williamson's "Autobiography As a Way of Knowing: A Student-Centered Curriculum Model Using Maya Angelou's I Know Whv the Caaed Bird Sinas" attempts to show Angelou's five-volume autobiography as appropriate for the application of a curriculum model for the teaching of autobiography. 5 In compiling this biographical section I found useful Angelou's five autobiographies, as well as other secondary sources. Lynn Z. Bloom's article for Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol.38 discusses both Angelou's life and her critical reception until 1983; Nancy Shuker's biography, Mava Anaelou. though written for a young audience, provides information not found in the autobiographies about Angelou's family and her career accomplishments. Of particular value is Conversations with Mava Angelou. edited by Jeffrey M. Elliot, a collection of previously published interviews, including a conversation between Angelou and Rosa Guy. Other sources consulted for this biographical sketch include Contemporary Literary Criticism Vol. 35; Beacham's Popular Fiction in America Vol. 1; Current Biography 1974: and Contemporary Authors Vols. 65-68. CHAPTER TWO 1 This is a term that Baker uses in his later work, Blues. Ideology and Afro-American Literature (1984), to refer to his theories of language in The Journey Back: Issues in Black Literature and Criticism (1980). 2 Baker identifies those scholars who laid the groundwork for his assertions in The Journey Back. He bases his arguments in the context of those scholars. In the field of symbolic anthropology, Baker cites Clifford Geertz, Victor Turner, and Edmund Leach. He also recognizes the work of psychologists, philosophers of language, and literary critical phenomenologists, notably Stanley Fish, Wolfgang

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Iser, Roger Brown, Herbert and Eve Clard, Hunter Diack, and George Dillon. In his assertions about the structural relationships of texts and their views, he relies on the works of structural linquists Claude Levi-Strauss, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Roman Jakobson. 3 Douglass's Narrative presents a vivid account of the cruelties of slavery. Chapter One contains a horrifying recollection of Douglass as a child witnessing his aunt being severely beaten. Later as an adult Douglass himself experiences beatings from overseers, and on one occasion he witnesses an overseer kill a slave who jumped into a creek to relieve the burnings of being lashed. Other cruelties, such as food, clothing and heat deprivations, are recounted in the narrative also. 4 My understanding of this comparison derived, in part, from discussions of these works in Dr. James Gray's graduate seminar, "American Autobiography," at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (Spring 1992). 5 Barksdale and Kinnamon provide a sketch of Washington in relation to his contemporaries in Black Writers of America (408-412) . 6 In Chapter Three of The Souls of Black Folk: Essavs and Sketches. W.E.B. DuBois bitterly attacks B.T. Washington's philosophy which asks the African Americans at the time to give up political power, civil rights, and higher education. 7 An examination of the movement known as The Harlem Renaissance and the artists involved appears in "Renaissance and Radicalism: 1915-1945" (Barksdale and Kinnamon 467-484). 8 Later, Toomer did not want to be recognized as a black writer. He lived in several places, including France, and "passed" as white. Other African-American writers, in particular Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes, openly denounced Toomer for abandoning his cultural heritage. 9 Hughes's jazz and blues poems have been examinined by many scholars and critics. One particular essay that I found helpful in this study is "The Blue Poetry of Langston Hughes" by Edward E. Waldron. 10 James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son. Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son contain certain autobiographical accounts as well as Baldwin's literary and social criticism. In Part I of Notes. Baldwin attacks the inaccurate treatment of blacks by white artists. He also

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argues that black artists, limited by the white tradition in which they are expected to work, likewise create a false image of black life. He specifically criticizes Richard Wright's Native Son for its oversimplification of the dilemmas of black life. 11 Richard Wright explains in his autobiography Black Bov that as a young boy he recognized the power of employing white language and western rationalism to express his social concerns. His views of language and the power of words surface as a major theme of the work, as Wright sought to understand his world in the terms of white writers such as Theodore Dreiser, Edgar Lee Masters, H.L. Mencken, Sherwood Anderson, and Sinclair Lewis (267-288). 12 According to an article by James A. Miller in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, poet, music critic, essayist, dramatist, novelist, and political activist LeRoi Jones changed his name in 1968 to Ameer (later Amiri) Baraka, a name given to him by Heshaam Jaaber, an orthodox Muslim. Ameer means "prince" and Baraka means "the blessed one." Until 1974, he also used the title Imanu, which means "one who has read the Koran, a spiritual leader" (34). 13 In Report from Part One Gwendolyn Brooks supports Baraka's "call" to all black people through art (183). In a number of her poems she seeks a black audience as she calls attention to the joys, sorrows, pride, and vitality of urban black life. In James Baldwin's later narratives, especially If Beale Street Could Talk, he explains the necessity of black artists' taking a stand against white dominance (115). He no longer believed in the possible reform of white Americans. 14 Baker explains his reoriented thinking from The Journey Back. He adopts the terminolgy of Marshall Sahlin's Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976). His shift from a centered to decentered subject was also prompted by dialectial thought in the works of Fredric Jameson and Hayden White. Baker sees his thought somewhere between symbolic anthropology and Fredric Jameson's "ideology of form." 15 Baker's definition of "code" is drawn from Umberto Eco's A Theory Of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1976). 16 Baker's use of the blues as "force" to explain cultural investigation comes from Hegel's The Phenomonenoloav of Spirit (New York: Oxford up, 1977). 17 Baker's adherence to critiques of political economy

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was prompted by the work of Louis Althusser, Etienne Balibar, and Jean Baudrillard. 18 By examining linquistic functions that serve as "governing statements," Baker is extending Michel Foucault's mode of descriptive analysis, the "archaeology of knowledge." 19 For a general understanding of the blues I found useful the following sources: Samuel Charters's The Blues Makers; W.C. Handy's Blues: An Anthology: LeRoi Jones's Blues People: Necrro Music in White America: Amiri Baraka's (LeRoi Jones) The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues: Charles Keil's Urban Blues: Lawrence Levine's Black Culture and Black Consciousness; John Work's American Necrro Sonas and Spirituals; The New Grove Dictionary Of American Music Vol 1; The Norton/Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music: and The Oxford Companion to Popular Music. 20 Lawrence Levine provides an insightful discussion of the rise of African-American secular song and the prevalent attitudes and characteristics associated with minstrels, work songs, blues and jazz in Chapter Four of Black Culture and Black Consciousness. 21 According to Abbe Niles, the chorus of Joe Turner blues is perhaps the prototype of all blues. Pete Turney, governor of Tennessee from 1892 to 1896, and his brother Joe would periodically lead convicts to the Nashville penitentiary. Fear of Joe, the "long chain man," (his surname is mispronounced in the songs) resulted in many versions of verse that are referred to as Joe Turner blues. One example of the chorus follows: Dey tell me Joe Turner's come an' gone-0, Lawdy i Tell me Joe Turner's come an' gone— 0, Lawdy! Got my man— an'--gone. (Handy 17) CHAPTER THREE 1 Angelou has employed musical and dramatic accompaniment in her art; most notably is her musical production of And Still I Rise which aptly demonstrates the blues and jazz lyrical qualities of Angelou's poetry. This study, however, will presume the lyrics functioning exclusive of any actual instrumental additions. 2 According to legends, John Henry, a famous steel driver known for his larger than normal hammer and his larger than life physical prowess, worked at a time when the

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"steel driver" was the most respected class of workmen in America. Working on the construction of the Big Ben Tunnel in West Virginia, he was famous for his immense pride in his work and for staging and winning contests with other steel drivers. The legend says that a foreman came to the worksite one day to demonstrate a steam drill. The idea of the steam drill infuriated John Henry, and he challenged the man to an all day drilling contest. The feat John Henry performed was heroic, for at the end of the day John Henry had drilled deeper than the steam driller; however, the story ends on a grim note when John Henry falls dead after the contest. Some versions report that John Henry laid his hammer down just before he died, while others tell that he had his hammer in his hand when he died. While many versions of the story exist, efforts to trace the legend have been unable to prove the veracity of any of them, or if John Henry even lived (Work 40). 3 Lawrence Levine and LeRoi Jones discuss "the dozens" in their books. Some examples of these humorous insults which derived from African songs of recrimination follow: "Your father's a woman." "Your mother like it." (Jones 27) "Your mother so old she fart dust." "Your mother raised you on ugly milk." "Your house is so small the roaches walk single file." (Levine 347) 4 Angelou has said that she is the speaker of her poems (Howe C4). However, in some poems such as "Pickin Em Up and Layin Em Down," she is obviously not the speaker. In this poem the speaker is masculine, for he comments about "a long-legged girl in San Francisco," "a pretty brown [girl] in Birmingham," and a "lovely Detroit lady" with whom he has sexual attraction, and there is no reason to believe that these relations are not heterosexual. CHAPTER FOUR 1 Levine parallels the frustated lover in African-American lyrics with the dupe in the slaves trickster tales. Both figures, thoughfully aware of their inability to change their immediate environment, continue to return to the source of their suffering as if propelled by a force of fate (270-272). 2 In the 1920s Blind Lemon "authentic" itinerant southern moved from Texas to Chicago to Records. His success opened an blues singers (including Blind

Jefferson, a rough, blues singer from Texas, record with Paramount avenue for other southern Blake, Charley Patton, Sam

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Collins, and Son House) to migrate to northern urban areas where they had commercial success with both black and white audiences (Levine 227). In The Blues Makers Samuel Charters provides an in-depth analysis of Blind Lemon's rough style, indicative of the influence of slave work songs, prison songs, and even "cowboy" music on Texas blues (177-187). 3 In her fourth volume of autobiography, The Heart of a Woman. Angelou discusses her relationship with Vusumzi Make, a South African freedon fighter she met in the early 1960's while working in New York as the Northeastern regional coordinate for Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The prose that speaks of Make reveals Angelou's deep passion for him, his cause, and his African-ness. Angelou refers to Make as her ex-husband; however, they were never legally married (107-133) . 4 Levine provides examples of blues lyrics that treat certain realities that had been ignored by the white popular culture. Texas workers in 1890 sang of prostitution: Well, Baby, your house rent's due, Baby, your house rent's due; Just put on your bustle and make a little rustle, And bring in a dollar or two. (qtd. in Levine 280) Lonnie Johnson dealt with the sensitive issue of falling in love with a married woman: Blues and trouble, they walk hand in hand. Blues and trouble, they walk hand in hand. But you never had no trouble, 'til you fall for the wife of another man. (qtd in Levine 280) Ma Rainey's 1926 recording of "Sissy Blues" examined the subject of infidelity: I dreamed last night I was far from harm Woke up and found my man in a sissy's arms Now all the people ask me why I'm all alone, A sissy shook that thing and took my man from home. (qtd. in Levine 281) Even the subject of masturbation was expressed freely: In Dixieland I'll make my stand, Can't get the woman I want I'm gonna use my . (qtd. in Levine 281) Blind Lemon Jefferson performed "sexual blues" that_ suggested his physical desires in insistent repetitions as Charters notes with examples such as the following: . . . I'm crazy about my light bread and my pigmeat on the side. I say I'm crazy about my light bread and my pigmeat on the side. But if I taste your jelly roll I be satisfied.

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(183)

In 1926 Victoria Spivey recorded "Black Snake Blues," a song about a common field experience of a young girl encountering a snake. Later, Blind Lemon Jefferson adopted the image of the black snake to represent his penis. Other blues singers continued to use the image of the black snake with intentional sexual overtones (Charters 183-184) . CHAPTER FIVE 1 Levine cites the following examples of other blues lyrics that express protest: Going North, child, where I can be free Where there's no hardship, like in Tennessee. I'm tired of this Jim Crow, gonna leave this Jim Crow town Doggone my black soul, I'm sweet Chicago bound. Every day seem like murder down here. Every day seem like murder here. Mr. Rich Man, Rich Man, open up your heart and mind .. . Give the poor man a chance, help stop these hard, hard times. Lot's of people had justice, they'd be in the penitentiary too.

(267)

2 Titon explains that whiskey was an importantmotif in early donwhome blues, but not all singers held the same opinion. He cites the following blues lyrics that reveal the dangers of alcohol: When the bootlegger goes to his still gets ready to make his stuff He's got concentrated lye cocaine and his snuff He'll fix you a drink that just won't quit It'll make you fight a circle saw Make you slap the lady down And make you pick a fight with your pa . . . . (187-8)

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Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1963. Rev. of Just Give Me A Cool Drink Of Water 'fore I Diiie. by Maya Angelou. Choice 9 (1972) : 210. Kay, Jackie. "The Maya Character." Marxism Today (Sept. 1987): 18+. Keil, Charles. Urban Blues. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1966. Kent, George E. "Maya Angelou's I Know Whv the Caaed Bird Sinas and the Black Autobiographical Tradition." Kansas

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Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Silva, Candelaria. Rev. of Shaker. Whv Don't You Sing?. byMaya Angelou. School Library Journal 30.1 (1983): 143. Smith, Sidonie A. "Black Womanhood." Where I'm Bound: Patterns of Slavery and Freedom in American Autobiography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1974. 121-136. . "The Song of A Caged Bird: Maya Angelou's Quest after Self-Acceptance." Southern Humanities Review 8 (1973): 365-375. Stepto, R.B. "The Phenomenal Woman and the Severed Daughter." Parnassus: Poetry in Review 8.1 (FallWinter 1979): 312-20. Struthers, Ann. "Angelou's Spirit Sings in New Poems." Des Moines (Iowa) Register 2 Dec. 1990: B6 .

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Waldron, Edward E. "The Blue Poetry of Langston Hushes." Necrro American Literature Forum 5.4 (Winter 1971): 140-149. Walters, Colin. "Maya Angelou and the Hues of Love" Washington Times 3 May 1983: 3A.

Washington, Booker T. Up From Slavery. 1901. New York: Dell, 1968. Weller, Sheila. "Work in Progress." Intellectual Digest 3.10 (1973): 11-14. Williamson, Marie Solomon. "Autobiography As a Way of Knowing: A Student-Centered Curriculum Model Using Maya Angelou's I Know Whv the Caged Bird Sings." DAI 48/05A (1987): 1110. U of North Carolina-Greensboro. Wilson, Amy L. "Angelou Looks at Strength, Pain of Black Families." (Little Rock) Arkansas Gazette 10 June 1990: C5. Work, John W. American Negro Songs and Spirituals. New York: Bonanza, 1940. Wright, Richard. Native Son. New York: Harper, 1940.

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