RIP, Maya Angelou

The legendary writer, activist, director, actress, composer, speaker and pillar of American identity is dead at 86 after ongoing health problems; she was found by her caretaker this morning. Today would be as good a day as any, I think, to take a look back through her autobiographies, or read some of her poetry, or cook something out of her cookbooks, or read her last tweet, or remember from her Art of Fiction interview how she wrote “lying on a made-up bed with a bottle of sherry, a dictionary, Roget’s Thesaurus, yellow pads, an ashtray, and a Bible,” or think about how she studied dance with Martha Graham and spoke six languages and her 1972 screenplay for Georgia, Georgia was the first by a black woman ever to get filmed (it was nominated for a Pulitzer; Angelou also composed the film’s score), or just break your own heart with how amazing she is on Sesame Street singing “It’s my name and no one can take it, it’s my name and I’m proud that it’s mine.”

And here is the end of her poem “On the Pulse of Morning,” which Angelou read at Bill Clinton’s 1993 inauguration, the first black female poet to take that stage (here’s an old Times profile in which she sits in a “mint-green crushed velvet” armchair and calls for some Chardonnay “and a straw” to help with her arthritis shortly before the ceremony):

5

Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song. It says,
Come, rest here by my side.

6

Each of you, a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,
Clad in peace, and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the rock were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.
The River sang and sings on.