Maya Angelou1
In 1993, when Bill Clinton decided to invite a poet to read at his first inauguration ceremony – for the first time since John F. Kennedy invited Robert Frost in 1961 – he chose fellow Arkansas native Maya Angelou to write a poem celebrating the new beginning of his first presidency. The panoramic piece that Angelou composed, “On the Pulse of Morning,” reached millions of television viewers. Its popularity proved so great that it was published as a cassette and chapbook in 1993(Anderson 4). The work was distributed to schools, libraries, cultural centers, and bookstores nationwide (Shiflet 8). Appropriate for what Clinton promised would be a new era in American history, “On the Pulse of Morning” is a radiant piece that offers hope for the future by using good points of the past (Bloom 34). Angelou writes the poem using three objects of nature, “A Rock, A River, A Tree (Angelou 1), from which point she searches the distant past to provide answers for the present as well as advice for America’s future. Drawing different races, cultures, and religions together, the poem invites all of humankind to return to the foundations that made the country great, including basic values
The critical analysis of “On the Pulse of Morning is incomplete. Heart of a Woman, Mind of a Writer, and Soul of a Poet: A Critical Analysis of the Writing of Maya Angelo. Warning against another “armed struggle for profit (Angelou 2),” she addressed the nation with hope that the country would “study war no more (Angelou 5),” choosing instead to lift their collective faces, hearts, and eyes toward the first pulse of light breaking over the horizon (Cudjoe 103). The key to “a bright new morning,” Angelou proclaims, is to step out of our dark past and lift our faces, hearts, and eyes toward the light (Anderson 23). ” Israeli helicopter gunships assassinated Hisballa leaders in Southern Lebanon. Whereas long lines tend to build momentum like a train going downhill, shorter lines break up a poet’s images into smaller chunks. Emphasizing that personal cruelty – prejudice - is the most damaging, Angelou gathers a diverse crowd to stand before the tree of wisdom, Jew next to Arab, homosexual next to Catholic priest, brother and sister, all equal in the pulse they share (Bloom 41): “No less to Midas than the mendicant, /No less to you now than the mastodon then (Angelou 5). “On the Pulse of Morning,” with its diverse celebratory tone and hopeful message, was written as an address to a nation living in the last decade of the twentieth century (Shiflet 101). ” Is America made proud by its “armed struggles for profit (Angelou 3),” claiming glorious victory after the Gulf War? The picture the poem begins with is fairly grim: America’s forefathers forcing the native people from their land and families to wander on bloody feet; kidnapping cramped boatloads of Africans from across the ocean to become sub-human slaves; even today the environment is embattled, the oceans and rivers clogged with “collars of waste” and “currents of debris (Angelou 2). The metaphor of lifting one’s eyes to the light is deeply rooted in religious and philosophical literature (Anderson 18).
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Acceptance Essays
