Angelou Poetry

Black Pearls: The Poetry of Maya Angelou opens with the poet reading hard words: "No, the gap-legged whore on the eastern shore, enticing Europe to come into her"; "kneeling mothers picking undigested beans from yesterday's shit"; and "what a pity, the pity has folded in upon itself." The poet's rawness of vision and power seem capable of moving mountains. Some 30 years ago, when these words were recorded, Angelou was fierce, vital, justifiably angry. All this may not jibe with the weeping you did in junior high when you read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. It may not mesh with your vision of the gentle, elegant lady you know as the highly visible mentor and friend to Oprah Winfrey and the first-term inaugural poet to President Clinton. Yet know this: Angelou, a speaker of truth, not only survived cruel injustice but used words to burn through it and come to grace. As she says, "My crime is that I live to tell," and we desperately need her trespass in order to live with what we know and are unable to give voice to. --Paige La Grone

Words For You is a stunning collection of 22 of the greatest poems of all time, read by the best voices in American acting and set to the greatest classical music ever composed. Features readings from Meryl Streep, James Earl Jones, Helena Bonham Carter, Garrison Keillor, Jim Broadbent, Ruby Dee, and Terrence Stamp. Includes poems by Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allen Poe and Maya Angelou with the powerful music of classical giants such as Chopin, Debussy, Grieg and Mahler to name a few. The actors on this album have waived their royalty, donating to `First Book'; a non-profit organization with a single mission: to give children from low-income families the opportunity to read and own their first new books.

Words For You is a stunning collection of 22 of the greatest poems of all time, read by the best voices in American acting and set to the greatest classical music ever composed. Features readings from Meryl Streep, James Earl Jones, Helena Bonham Carter, Garrison Keillor, Jim Broadbent, Ruby Dee, and Terrence Stamp. Includes poems by Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allen Poe and Maya Angelou with the powerful music of classical giants such as Chopin, Debussy, Grieg and Mahler to name a few. All artist royalties from Words For You will be donated to the charity First Book, which provides new books to children in need, addressing one of the most important factors affecting literacy access to books. An innovative leader in social enterprise, First Book has distributed more than 80 million free and low-cost books in thousands of communities in the U.S. and Canada.

Director John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood, Rosewood) made an earnest effort in this, his second, film to say a great deal that is true and relevant about living and loving in a violent, difficult time in American history. Janet Jackson plays a beautician and poet who withdraws into herself after her boyfriend is murdered by gangsters. The late Tupac Shakur plays a postman who tries to get through to her, and the two travel on a course through urban America, connecting with family and community. Singleton has so much on his mind that the film comes out a terrible muddle, but there is a certain integrity peeking through the fog. Shakur makes a startlingly good impression in his film debut, and Jackson strips away her star veneer to play something like a real person--and entirely succeeds. Maya Angelou wrote the poems that pass as those penned by Jackson's character, and she also appears in the film. --Tom Keogh

Product Details Actors: Janet Jackson, Tupac Shakur, Regina King, Joe Torry, Tyra Ferrell Directors: John Singleton Writers: John Singleton Producers: John Singleton, Dwight Williams, Steve Nicolaides Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC Rated: R (Restricted) Number of tapes: 1 Studio: Sony Pictures VHS Release Date: January 9, 1996 Run Time: 109 minutes

Director John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood, Rosewood) made an earnest effort in this, his second, film to say a great deal that is true and relevant about living and loving in a violent, difficult time in American history. Janet Jackson plays a beautician and poet who withdraws into herself after her boyfriend is murdered by gangsters. The late Tupac Shakur plays a postman who tries to get through to her, and the two travel on a course through urban America, connecting with family and community. Singleton has so much on his mind that the film comes out a terrible muddle, but there is a certain integrity peeking through the fog. Shakur makes a startlingly good impression in his film debut, and Jackson strips away her star veneer to play something like a real person--and entirely succeeds. Maya Angelou wrote the poems that pass as those penned by Jackson's character, and she also appears in the film. --Tom Keogh

Writer-director John Singleton follows "Boyz N the Hood" with this perceptive drama starring Janet Jackson as a hairdresser and aspiring poetess from South Central L.A. who finds herself falling in love with a postal worker (rapper Tupac Shakur) she once detested after sharing a car trip to Oakland. Maya Angelou wrote the poetry and makes a cameo appearance. 109 min. Widescreen; Soundtracks: English Dolby Digital Surround, Spanish Dolby Digital Surround, French Dolby Digital Surround; Subtitles: English, Spanish, French; audio commentary by Singleton; theatrical trailers; filmographies; biographies.

Nothing else in life compares to the one-of-a-kind bond mothers have with their children. Filled with more than 400 heartfelt reflections from such luminaries as Sylvia Plath, Booker T. Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Helen Keller, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Thomas Edison, Mark Twain, Jamaica Kincaid, Anne Tyler, and Amy Tan, All About Mom is a wise, witty, touching, and always honest look at what it really means to be mom.

Nothing else in life compares to the one-of-a-kind bond mothers have with their children. Filled with more than 400 heartfelt reflections from such luminaries as Sylvia Plath, Booker T. Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Helen Keller, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Thomas Edison, Mark Twain, Jamaica Kincaid, Anne Tyler, and Amy Tan, All About Mom is a wise, witty, touching, and always honest look at what it really means to be mom. Whether reflecting on a mother's strength, unconditional love and wisdom or examining her influence on her grown children's lives, this book goes straight to the heart of this essential, enduring relationship.

Superbly told, with the poet's gift for language and observation, Angelou's autobiography of her childhood in Arkansas - a world of which most Americans are ignorant.From the Hardcover edition.

In this first of five volumes of autobiography, poet Maya Angelou recounts a youth filled with disappointment, frustration, tragedy, and finally hard-won independence. Sent at a young age to live with her grandmother in Arkansas, Angelou learned a great deal from this exceptional woman and the tightly knit black community there. These very lessons carried her throughout the hardships she endured later in life, including a tragic occurrence while visiting her mother in St. Louis and her formative years spent in California--where an unwanted pregnancy changed her life forever. Marvelously told, with Angelou's "gift for language and observation," this "remarkable autobiography by an equally remarkable black woman from Arkansas captures, indelibly, a world of which most Americans are shamefully ignorant."

Superbly told, with the poet's gift for language and observation, Angelou's autobiography of her childhood in Arkansas - a world of which most Americans are ignorant.From the Hardcover edition.

Dedicated to the daughter she never had but sees all around her, Letter to My Daughter reveals Maya Angelou’s path to living well and living a life with meaning. Here in short spellbinding essays are glimpses of the tumultuous life that taught Angelou lessons in compassion and fortitude: how she was brought up by her indomitable grandmother in segregated Arkansas, taken in at thirteen by her more worldly and less religious mother, and grew to be an awkward six-foot-tall teenager whose first experience of loveless sex paradoxically left her with her greatest gift, a son.Whether she is recalling lost friends such as Coretta Scott King and Ossie Davis, extolling honesty, decrying vulgarity, explaining why becoming a Christian is a “lifelong endeavor,” or simply singing the praises of a meal of red rice, Maya Angelou writes from the heart to millions of women she considers her extended family.