Shelf Awareness
Yesterday, the U.S. Postal Service unveiled a limited-edition stamp honoring poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou during a dedication ceremony at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C., the Washington Post reported. Those in attendance included Angelou's family, First Lady Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Attorney General Eric Holder, poets Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez, singers Roberta Flack and Valerie Simpson, as well as Malcolm X's daughters, Attallah and Ilyasah Shabazz.Noting that "the day felt more like a loving memorial than a stuffy government ribbon cutting," the Post also observed that there was no mention of a controversy surrounding the stamp's featured quotation--"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."--which first appeared in Joan Walsh Anglund's 1967 poetry collection, A Cup of Sun, published in 1967.
After initially defending the use of the quotation, Mark Saunders, a Postal Service spokesman, said, "Had we known about this issue beforehand, we would have used one of [Angelou's] many other works.... The sentence held great meaning for her and she is publicly identified with its popularity."
And story in The Washington Post on the misquote.
And at The Telegraph
No comments:
Post a Comment