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Rating:  - Excellent collection of Maya Angelou's works
I was so happy to find this collection of poetry and writings in one book by Maya Angelou. I find her work so uplifting and her writings cut to the core of humanity and show life as it is. It is real and not all glossed over and it goes right to your heart. Beautiful work...a pleasure to own. A work that I will read again and again.
Rating: - Poetry that I can understand and identify with!
Maya Angelou's poems are wonderful. You can understand and grasp her meaning while she is not afraid to tell it like it is. Her poetry speaks to the heart of every woman no matter the race. When you read her poems you are not merely reading words but you feel the words and are surrounded by their message. I only wished I could have studied her poetry in high school and college. She is truly magnificent!
Rating: - Poetry is what you make of it...
I only write this because I love this author more than any other and feel the need to defend this book from the critics who wrote the other reviews on it. I feel that poetry is what you make of it. If you can relate to what the poet is saying, what does it matter if they didn't follow specific guidelines that universities try to teach people who probably lack the free-form. Which is what I consider this book. Free-form poetry. So, yes,if you're only reading the book for an assignment or trying to analyze it into a specific form of poetry, you might be disappointed. However, if you are reading it in leisure or to connect with someone who can beautifully express some of our emotions and events of life, you won't be disappointed. That is if you can relate to it. As with all poetry, it will mean more to you if you can understand where the poet is coming from and connect that with your own emotions and personal experiences. From the time that I picked up this book over a decade ago, I have loved it! I hardly ever take the time to go back and re-read anything. I figure, once read, the most important of the knowledge is there and to move on, but I have read and re-read this book more times than I can remember! For me, it's full of emotion. I feel that in it's free-form, it's beautifully written. I could only ever hope to create a book as outstanding as this one, and I often compare my own free-form to hers.Once again, it's an outstanding book if you can relate to it.
Rating:  - Motivational writer? Perhaps. Poet? In your dreams.
Maya Angelou is an expert at writing easily remembered catchphrases and proverbial tidbits that have all the taste of wisdom with half the calories. She fills her fans with a warm, fuzzy feeling inside, she inspires them, she makes them feel as if she speaks The Truth. In other words, she's great at writing motivational proverbs. She is not, however, a poet. Not even close. She displays virtually no poetic craft and shows no real skill at compression, imagery, figurative language, and metaphor, to name a few tools that make a piece of writing a poem. At best, this collection would bore the pants off of any serious reader of poetry. At worst, it will make them want to gouge their eyes out with a pair of #6 knitting needles. If you think this is poetry, you haven't read any poetry yet.
Rating:  - The Cover Is The Best Part Of This Book
I was raised to believe that if you can't say something nice about someone you shouldn't say anything at all, so whenever I deliver up a negative review on someone's work, I feel slightly guilty. That admitted, well, basically I'll only offer this: I did not care for Ms. Angelou's poetry very much. However, were I to continue on with this review, I might also add that I failed to discern her talent or feel much of a personal tie to her cultural awareness or her message. I might even conclude (were I not stopping at what I wrote up above) by confessing that even the range of her vocabulary (or should I say the lack of a range) failed to impress me. I don't think Maya Angelou deserves the high praise she gets on an almost universal level and have my own opinion as to why she receives so much of it.
Just my view...
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