She grew up in the middle of discrimination times, and she was raped as a child at age 7. This affected her so negatively she wouldn't speak for 5 years. Maya Angelou wrote many marvelous pieces, poems, books, and stuff. This is just some info off the top of my head, and she's not an attractive person, but she is a great person. While I am not a fan of poetry, I mst admit she was a wonderful writer and person.

If you don't like somethig, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.- Maya Angelou

way way over rated!

I know why the caged bird sings... cuz she's a moody malcontent who stirs up racial division due to living in the past and eschewing meaningful advances in civil rights in favor of guilt-invoking poetry and has positioned herself such that any criticism reflects RACIST! upon her critics.

Maya's book The Caged Bird Sings is painful, moving, and beautifully written. It describes her life story and depicts how sad she was at one point in her life.

I love Maya Angelou's poems they are so inspiring to me they help me to have more confidence in being a black women I love her Still I Rise Poem!!! Tarah From Boston Ma.

I absolutely adore her for many reasons...but one is how she speaks in song...in a universal rythm. She is eloquent & masterful. She is graceful & feminine. But one of her most important traits: she wasn't schooled at Yale, Harvard, or Stanford to become a legend in her own time. She has a natural wonder. (On a side note, to "Moosekarloff," I'm thinking that you are a racist...a KKK member...something of the sort. To write such horrible things about anyone & to mention 2 black women only. Beware of Moosekarloff's garbage!!)

Her poetry is eloquent, informative and beautiful. She is one of the greats of the 20th century.

Maya Angelou's poetry talks about realism. A line from one of her poems......"The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown, but long for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill....for the caged bird wants freedom." Her poetry speaks to many people who have suffered. I mean, Give this poor woman a break! She was raped brutally as a young child and didn't speak for about 8 years. She became a recluse and when she finally expresses how she feels, People jump on her back calling her "Anti-White" or "Racist Black Supremacist." She never said a damn bad thing about white people! Where do they get this crap? I read an interview with Maya Angelou and she seems like a very kind, intelligent, and loving woman. One who's suffered. She's had a rough time. Please don't make it rougher.

Idiotic diarist who passes herself off as a poet and the idiotic boors out there buy into it. I tried reading one of her exercises in printed flatulence and found that reading the back of a cereal box was more compelling. Very little craft to her work, nothing intellectually compelling about it and the use of language is so pedestrian that you'd find more poetry in the Menu at TGIF. The people who think this woman has any talent, anything worthwhile to say are the same folks who think Oprah Winfrey is God's Greatest Gift to Television. Go figure. And spare me!!

she's a drag--writes like a third grader. but people love her--so i guess that superceeds intelligent prose and poetry

Her poetic style is very different from many of my favourites, but the sheer power of her words and the emotion behind them leave me in awe. In her poem, "Our Grandmothers", she writes these lines that must, I think, be integral to her own being (although it may be presumptuous of me to make that assumption): "She said, But my description cannot / fit your tongue, for / I have a certain way of being in this world, / and I shall not, I shall not be moved." And then there's her wonderfully confident and upbeat "Phenomenal Woman" - "I'm a woman / Phenomenally. / Phenomenal woman, / That's me."