My Virtual Reading Room

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

( Just like moons and like suns,/With the certainty of tides,... )

(Happened to run across this poem recently and realized that's where the title of Maya Angelou's book came from...)
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Sympathy
I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!

(Paul Laurence Dunbar)

"We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty."

-- Maya Angelou

Dignity—the word itself—has come to mean different things to different people, as many words do. It doesn't just mean always being stiff and composed. It means a belief in oneself, that one is worthy of the best. Dignity means that what I have to say is important, and I will say it when it's important for me to say it. Dignity really means that I deserve the best treatment I can receive. And that I have the responsibility to give the best treatment I can to other people.

—Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou recites her poem "Phenomenal Woman"

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
--Maya Angelou,
American author and poet

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

Communication I

She wished of him a lover's kiss and
nights of coupled twinning.
They laced themselves
between the trees
and to the water's edge.

Reminding her
the cratered moon lay light-years away,
he spoke of Greece, the Parthenon
and Cleopatra's barge.

She splayed her foot
up to the shin
within the ocean brine.

He quoted Pope and Bernard Shaw
and Catcher in the Rye.

Her sandal lost,
she dried her toe
and then she mopped her brow.

Dry-eyed
she walked into her room
and frankly told her mother,
"Of all he said, I understood
he said he loved another."

(Maya Angelou)