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Tuesday, December 10, 2002
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Is This a Thinly Disguised Story About Maya Angelou?
There's a hilarious story in The Onion about people's inability to publicly admit that the poetry of a disabled nine-year-old is terrible:
The poem troubled a San Francisco bookstore employee, identified only as "Veronica."
"I don't consider myself some bitter, cynical crank who can't appreciate sincere sentiment," Veronica said. "But the unrelenting cheerfulness is a bit much. When I read one of these Hopeweavings poems, I want to open my shirt collar and go out for air. God is always near, children are always special, and the sun is forever shining. I feel like somebody's cramming a rainbow down my throat."
Substitute "African-American woman" for "disabled nine-year-old," and you have Maya Angelou's poetry, from the "slapdash mixed metaphors" to the "endless cliches" involving birds, as decried by Francine Prose in "I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read" in Harper's a few years ago:
Along the way, Prose skewers Maya Angelou's writing, which is at the top of most high-school reading lists. About Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," she writes, "To hold up this book as a paradigm of memoir, of thought--of literature--is akin to inviting doctors convicted of malpractice to instruct our medical students."
8:24:44 PM 
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Did I Hurt Myself?
This morning, I woke up with a nasty scrape on my cheekbone that wasn't there when I went to sleep. What the hell is going on here?
8:23:26 AM
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© Copyright 2003 Morgan N. Sandquist.
Last update: 11/2/03; 10:32:19 AM.
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