Poetry Criticism | Angelou, Maya - J. T. Keefe (review date 1983)

J. T. Keefe (review date 1983)

SOURCE: A review of Shaker, Why Don't You Sing? in World Literature Today, Vol. 58, No. 4, Autumn, 1984, p. 607.

[In the following thumbnail review, Keefe praises Angelou's poems in Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?]

Deceptively light and graceful, Maya Angelou's poems are lyrical, emotional, melancholy. They move to inner tunes—“I wait in silence / For the bridal croon,” we read in the title poem—and chart a stoic angst reminiscent of Piaf. As in Piaf, there is here deep gut feeling based on history and myth. “Family Affairs” is a poem that encapsulates the story of the poet's painful origins, beautifully realized in contrapuntal harmony against the legend of Rapunzel (she of the folktale who let down her golden hair for her lover to climb to her tower). With an enviable economy, Angelou contrasts black/white tensions, using this myth as a framework. It is a wise and deeply felt poem. Again,...

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