Poet touts the power of 'rainbows in the clouds'

Matthew K. Roy

November 06, 2007 12:20 am

— SALEM -- "Please be me for just a minute," poet Maya Angelou asked the crowd last night at Salem State College.
"Just see it," she said, before describing the moment that she first learned about the United Nations. She was 16, pregnant and unmarried in San Francisco. She read in the newspaper that the fledgling organization needed translators. She had a knack for languages, and the job appealed to her.
But it seemed so impossibly out of reach that Angelou broke down crying. Fifty years later, in 1995, the United Nations asked her "to write a poem for the world" and deliver it at its anniversary celebration.
Her success story is rooted in the encouragement of others, Angelou said.
"So many people said, 'You can do it. Try it. Do the best you can,'" she said at last night's installment of the college's speaker series. "I was able to do it not for any other reason than I had so many rainbows in the clouds."
Angelou, 79, spoke to 1,800 people, mostly women, in the college's sold-out gymnasium. She mixed stories from her life with a sampling of poetry, both her own and work from other black writers, including Langston Hughes and Paul Laurence Dunbar.
The refrain she kept coming back to throughout a more-than-hourlong presentation involved the phrase "rainbow in the clouds." It refers to a person with the "courage to look through complexion and see community."
Angelou fondly remembered her crippled uncle, who taught her the multiplication tables while she was growing up in small-town Arkansas. Upon his death, Angelou learned he had quietly influenced other children, white and black, in a life-changing way.
She is the best-selling author of numerous books of poetry and several autobiographies, including the acclaimed "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." Angelou read "On the Pulse of Morning" at President Bill Clinton's first inauguration in 1993 and earned a Grammy award for best spoken-word recording.
An author and an activist, Angelou worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She lectures throughout the country and abroad and holds a professorship at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.
She was last in Salem 20 years ago and jokingly wondered what took the college so long to invite her back.
"I don't know what I did wrong," Angelou said.
"Exhilarating," Salem State senior Lasauna Pakeman said of hearing Angelou. Lasauna appreciated the poet's wisdom and humor.
"I was just in awe the whole time," Latoya Odlum, a recent Salem State graduate, said. "I couldn't believe I was sitting in the same room with her."
"I found her to be very inspirational," student body president Alexandra Slazar said.
Angelou said that poetry can also be a "rainbow in the clouds."
"Over the years, I've found poetry to be my saving grace," she said. When times are tough, Angelou said, it can remind you "that you are not only OK, that you are splendid in fact."

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