When Great Trees Fall

by Maya Angelou

Genres: Poetry

1 pages, Unknown Binding

About the author

Maya Angelou was an American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou's series of seven autobiographies focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.
She became a poet and writer after a string of odd jobs during her young adulthood. These included fry cook, sex worker, nightclub performer, Porgy and Bess cast member, Southern Christian Leadership Conference coordinator, and correspondent in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa. Angelou was also an actress, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was active in the Civil Rights Movement and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances a year on the lecture circuit, something she continued into her eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" (1993) at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton, making her the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961.
With the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou publicly discussed aspects of her personal life. She was respected as a spokesperson for Black people and women, and her works have been considered a defense of Black culture. Her works are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to ban her books from some U.S. libraries. Angelou's most celebrated works have been labeled as autobiographical fiction, but many critics consider them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt to challenge the common structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Her books center on themes that include racism, identity, family, and travel.

Reviews

[Cecily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just the title poem. Achingly real:

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.

I'm still stuck in the dark, cold caves,
waiting for peace to bloom slowly and irregularly,
grateful that he existed,
and for the nurture he gave me -
and still does in some ways.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poem talks about the way we act right after losing someone close to our hearts. The "great souls" who have swayed our lives are like "great trees” which send shockwaves over the complete woodland when they fall to the ground. Congruently the bereavement of our adored ones intensely distraught our lives. Nonetheless we are in due course appeased, extremely bearing their instrumental support which helps us to march ahead, following their tracks. Angelou's poem thus, climaxes in a note of buoyancy and sanguinity, urging us to move forward even when anguish may appear insufferable and horrendous. This verse, penned in 1987 subsequent to the demise of Angelou's colleague and fellow activist, James Baldwin, continues to remain a powerful piece of poetry.

[Laura Gold · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful poem

[midnightfaerie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A beautiful poem on what happens when great people die - the loss left behind, and eventually a peace born out of their greatness. Beautiful.