From: heath@athena.cs.uga.edu (Terrance Heath)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,alt.president.clinton
Subject: Re: Maya Angelou inaugural poem
Date: 25 Jan 93 17:53:38 GMT
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens

In article <=!&vHh!94c@atlantis.psu.edu> boltz@chopin.psu.edu (Mark Boltz) writes:
>Seems to me that as you noticed who was/was not included in the poem, be they
>English or Iguanan or whatever, you missed the point of the poem completely.
>She was trying to say, "Let us forget this past, this horrible history of
>ours - of wars, oppression, suppression of rights - and look to a common fu-
>ture.  It's time for us all to stop bickering like little kids over who's in
>what group and work *together* as AMERICANS to get this country back on it's 
>feet.  As long as we stay divided into lots of little, tiny special interest
>groups all begging to get our own little programs and our own little rights 
>we're gonna get absolutely nowhere.

	I understand this reading of the poem "On the Pulse of
Morning", however it is somewhat flawed. Ms. Angelou never tried to
say that "Let us forget this past, this horrible history of ours".  In
fact in her poem she writes:

	
   History, despite its wrenching pain,
   Cannot be unlived, and if faced
   With courage, need not be lived again.

The key words here are "if faced with courage".  This does not sound
like Ms. Angelou is exhorting us to forget the history she calls to
our attention when she recalls images of the Native Americans forced
to leave their land on "bloody feet" (This is a reference to the Trail
of Tears), or when she refers to the horrors of American slavery as
she right of Africans "Arriving on a nightmare, praying on a dream".
	She is extolling us to forget nothing, but instead to face our
history with courage and honesty, in an attempt to understand not
merely that which makes us different, but that which makes us one.
Earlier in the poem, she writes :



   So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
   The African and Native American, the Sioux,
   The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
   The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
   The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
   The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
   They hear. They all hear
   The speaking of the Tree.


This is one of the much maligned lists in her poem.  Yet if read with
the understanding that no poet, however great, can list the name and
nature of every people to have walked the face of the earth, its plain
that Angelou is offering a symbolic embrace of all those people. Look,
instead at the huge historical and social gulfs between the people she
names, and consider those who are unnamed but who fill in those
spaces. The embrace includes them all I think. And she acknowledges
the human soul in them, writing:

	They hear.  They all hear
	The speaking of the Tree

That which speaks to the human soul knows no categories of race,
religion or national origin, and Ms. Angelou recognizes that in her
poem.

	Finally she urges us:



   Do not be wedded forever
   To fear, yoked eternally
   To brutishness.

   The horizon leans forward,
   Offering you space to place new steps of change.
   Here, on the pulse of this fine day
   You may have the courage
   To look up and out upon me, the
   Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.

   No less to Midas than the mendicant.

   No less to you now than the mastodon then.

   Here on the pulse of this new day
   You may have the grace to look up and out
   And into your sister's eyes, into
   Your brother's face, your country
   And say simply
   Very simply
   With hope
   Good morning.


What are your sister's eyes or your brother's face? Your country? I
think she is saying when you look into the eyes of your neigboor
(whatever he/she may be) you are looking at America, and ultimately
looking at yourself. There is unity in this poem, if we stop counting
beans long enough to look at it and to read between its lines, as well
as reading it's well-composed lines themselves.

	I couldn't resist this. I am, after all, an English Major.


Terrance Heath
heath@athena.cs.uga.edu
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:26568 rec.arts.sf.written:18491