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The Ottawa Citizen Wednesday 3 June 1998: Maya Angelou demonstrates the amazing power of words Maya Angelou, poet and performer, dazzled the crowd at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, last night. "Poe-EM". The first thing is how she pronounces the word. "Poe-EM". Power, grace, the ability to tell stories about joy, wonder and life, as well as tales of loss, despair and death. "Poe-EM". She is Maya Angelou, a famous American poet, producer, director and performer. Last night, she dazzled an adoring audience at the National Arts Centre in the last lecture in this year's Unique Lives and Experiences series. "Poe-EM," Ms. Angelou would say, with a sparkle in her eyes. And she would sing, releasing her majestic voice, starting with a low rumble, building to a soulful high. She started the evening with a song: "When it looked like the sun wasn't going to shine any more, God put a rainbow in the clouds." The rainbow was to become the evening's central theme, an image of life, of poetry, of struggle, of redemption. Ms. Angelou painted the rainbow and poetry as symbols of hope. Even "in the direst, dreariest of times, there's a possibility of seeing light." She spoke of romance. "I never trust someone who says, 'I love you,' when they don't love themselves," Ms. Angelou said. It's like getting offered a free shirt from a naked man, she continued, the crowd roaring. It's a bum deal. " 'The glory of the day was in her face, the beauty of the night was in her eyes,' " she said, reading from a favourite poem. She told the sold-out theatre about trauma, her own rape at the age of eight. The man -- a friend of her mother -- was jailed for a day, found dead three days after that. Ms. Angelou stopped speaking. She didn't say a word for years. "I thought my voice might just randomly kill the man in the green shirt over there or the woman in the yellow dress," Ms. Angelou said. She immersed herself in poetry, in the work of dozens of poets, including Shakespeare. She memorized more than 60 sonnets, falling in love with one. "I know he wrote it for me," Ms. Angelou said. "I know one was so apt for me that by eleven, I thought Shakespeare was probably a black girl from the South who had been molested." It taught her that any voice -- black, white, yellow, red, every colour you can imagine, the colours of a rainbow -- can tell a story, a personal story for millions. "We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike," Ms. Angelou said. When she was still not speaking at twelve, a teacher, who had provided much of the reading Ms. Angelou devoured, told her: "You don't really love poetry." The twelve year old protested, writing on a scrap of paper: "Yes, ma'am, I do." "Until you speak it," the teacher said, "you will never love poetry." Devastated, Maya Angelou cried and cried. With new resolve, she ventured to a private space under her home, in the backwoods of Alabama, and read poetry to herself, the words "stumbling off my tongue, and I have not stopped since." Like rainbows, like passion, like love, like poe-EMs. by John Major Copyright 1998 The Ottawa Citizen janet paterson aka calendar control supervisor 51/10 - sinemet/selegiline/prozac - [log in to unmask] quotations: http://newww.com/cgi-bin/do_cal?c:newvoice pwp event calendar: http://newww.com/cgi-bin/do_cal?c:pwpc