The Mind Creative
“Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me….”
(Phenomenal Woman: Maya Angelou)
In the morning of May 28, 2014, a life lived with beauty, grace,
ruthless confidence and fearless passion came to a screeching
halt. Maya Angelou, the poet, memoirist, activist, dancer, singer,
civil rights activist, mentor and hero to the oppressed, truly a
women representing the Renaissance among the modern times,
breathed her last in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, a place that
she called home for the last three decades of her life. The ‘caged
bird’ whose songs soared on the wings of an eagle left behind the
legacy, depth and wisdom of her phenomenal life in her classic
works of poetry and memoirs. As for her innumerable readers,
they will remain seeped in the classic intensity and power of her
poems including Phenomenal Woman, Still I Rise and I Know Why
The Caged Bird Sings, the seething, penetrating documents of the
life and persona of the woman who dared to talk from the heart,
and had fearlessly depicted her rawness, passion, vulnerability as
well as strength, inspiring us with the magic of her words.
My first tryst with the poet and profound thinker Maya was the
reading of the fiercely feminist poem Phenomenal Woman. Like
her other readers and admirers, I had been inspired by the way
she unfolded the unconventional beauty and the deep, raw
sexuality of a woman in the lines of the poem. In this fiery poem,
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