'We Write Because We Can'

“We write for the same reason that we walk, talk, climb mountains or swim the oceans – because we can.   We have some impulse within us that makes us want to explain ourselves to other human beings.  That’s why we paint, that’s why we dare to love someone, that’s why we write – because we have the impulse to explain who we are.” – Maya Angelou

Author, poet, dancer, actress, and singer, Angelou was born on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Mo.   First gaining worldwide acclaim with her 1968 autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – written at the urging of fellow writer James Baldwin and cartoonist Jules Feiffer – she went on to publish 7 autobiographies plus 3 books of essays, many books of poetry, and a long list of plays, movies, and television shows.     In her 50-year career she won dozens of awards and some 50 honorary degrees.

It was Angelou’s poems, which she performed at the dozens of public readings and talks, that drew the most attention.  It was my good fortune to hear her at two of those readings and to help host her on the campus of Augsburg College.  She was asked if she wrote her poems first for herself and then to share, or the other way around.

“I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool – and I’m not any of those – to say that I don’t write for the reader,” she said.  “I do.  But I write for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say.  So I write for myself and that reader who will pay his or her dues.”

Share A Writer’s Moment with a friend at http://writersmoment.blogspot.com