As we mourn Maya Angelou on the day after her death, it’s heart­en­ing to remem­ber that she lived sev­er­al more life­times than most in her 86 years, some filled with pain and strug­gle, some with great joy. While gen­er­al­ly known as a poet, writer, teacher, actress, and activist, Angelou actu­al­ly got her start in the pub­lic eye as a Calyp­so dancer and singer, even appear­ing in a film, Calyp­so Heat Wave and releas­ing an album, Miss Calyp­so, both in 1957. It’s said that Bil­lie Hol­i­day told Angelou in 1958, “you’re going to be famous but it won’t be for singing,” She was right of course, but Angelou retained the air of a per­former as a read­er of her work.

Above, see her deliv­er an ani­mat­ed read­ing of her famous poem, “Still I Rise,” which ref­er­ences many of her past lives, includ­ing lines that seem to allude to her Miss Calyp­so days: “Does my sex­i­ness upset you? / Does it come as a sur­prise / That I dance like I’ve got dia­monds / At the meet­ing of my thighs?” The stan­za is indica­tive of anoth­er qual­i­ty among the many she enu­mer­ates, “sassi­ness.” But she begins the read­ing on a more sober note, with a state­ment about human resilience, the abil­i­ty to get up and face the day, despite the fears we all live with. “Wher­ev­er that abides in a human being,” she says, “there is the noble­ness of the human spir­it.”

That resilience, the tran­scen­dence of painful per­son­al and ances­tral his­to­ries, was the great theme of Angelou’s work, whether in poems like “Still I Rise” or her reveal­ing 1969 auto­bi­og­ra­phy I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, also the title of a poem from her 1983 col­lec­tion Shak­er, Why Don’t You Sing?. While the caged bird is a very per­son­al sym­bol for Angelou, her poem “On the Pulse of the Morn­ing,” which you can see her read above at Bill Clinton’s 1993 inau­gu­ra­tion, speaks to the whole human species in ele­men­tal terms. Again she twines themes of tran­scend­ing painful and bloody his­to­ries with those of the “noble­ness of the human spir­it.” The speak­er of the poem is the earth itself, who address­es each of us as “a bor­dered coun­try / Del­i­cate and strange­ly made proud.” “His­to­ry,” she writes in much-quot­ed lines from the poem’s ninth stan­za, “despite its wrench­ing pain / Can­not be unlived, but if faced / With courage, need not be lived again.” For all the pain Angelou her­self endured and faced with courage, it’s a sen­ti­ment she earned the right to pro­claim. Her cel­e­bra­tion of not only the par­tic­u­lar African-Amer­i­can strug­gle, but also its part in the uni­ver­sal human strug­gle for dig­ni­ty and pur­pose stands as her endur­ing lega­cy. She ends the poem where she begins her read­ing of “Still I Rise” above, with a call for us to treat each oth­er with care and respect, to not be “wed­ded for­ev­er / To fear, yoked eter­nal­ly / To brutish­ness”:

Here, on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sis­ter’s eyes, and into
Your broth­er’s face, your coun­try
And say sim­ply
Very sim­ply
With hope –
Good morn­ing.

Both poems will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Dylan Thomas Recite His Clas­sic Poem, “Do Not Go Gen­tle Into That Good Night”

Hear Sylvia Plath Read 50+ of Her Dark, Com­pelling Poems

Stream Clas­sic Poet­ry Read­ings from Harvard’s Rich Audio Archive: From W.H. Auden to Dylan Thomas

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

Mat­suo Basho (1644–1694) lived his pecu­liar life on the con­vic­tion that art could cre­ate an aware­ness that allowed one to see into and com­mu­ni­cate the essence of expe­ri­ence. Through­out his life he searched for the state of being one with the object of his poems, some­thing he believed a poet need­ed to reach in order to write truth­ful­ly. This life-long search brought Basho to wan­der­ing. He thought that trav­el­ling would lead to a state of karu­mi (light­ness), essen­tial for art. In May 1689, when he was already a renowned poet in Japan, he sold his house and embarked on his great­est trip. Basho trav­elled light, always on foot and always slow­ly, look­ing care­ful­ly and deeply. He sought to leave every­thing behind (even him­self) and have a direct expe­ri­ence with the nature around him, and he saw Zen Bud­dhism and trav­el­ling as the way to achieve this. He walked 2000 kilo­me­ters around the north­ern coast of Hon­shu (Japan’s main island), writ­ing prose and poet­ry along the way, and com­pil­ing it all in a book that changed the course of Japan­ese lit­er­a­ture, The Nar­row Road to the Deep North.

We are Pablo Fer­nán­dez (writer) and Anya Gleiz­er (painter), the adven­tur­ers and artists behind In Basho’s Foot­steps. 325 years have passed since Basho began hik­ing the Nar­row Road.  This sum­mer, we will retrace his trail, in an effort to come in con­tact with Basho’s approach to art and trav­el­ling. We will hike for three months, camp­ing on the way, trav­el­ling as light­ly and aus­tere­ly as pos­si­ble. We will write and paint along the route, and com­pile what we pro­duce in an artist’s book. It will be hard, but art avails no com­pro­mis­es. Of course, apart from the phys­i­cal and men­tal hard­ships, there are finan­cial ones (flights and food for three months, and pub­lish­ing costs). To make the project pos­si­ble, we have used Kick­starter, a crowd­fund­ing plat­form. With Kick­starter peo­ple are able to fund the projects they like, and receive a reward in exchange (we are giv­ing our back­ers copies of our book, silk-screen prints and even paint­ings, depend­ing on the pledge).  This is a great way of cre­at­ing an audi­ence involved in the cre­ation process. We don’t only receive finan­cial sup­port, but also very use­ful feed­back, and we will be able to show our audi­ence how the book is com­ing togeth­er. Because we want our art to reach as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble, we are giv­ing a dig­i­tal edi­tion of the book to every­one who backs the project with more than $5, before the book is acces­si­ble to the gen­er­al pub­lic. Our Kick­starter cam­paign ends on June 4th. It has been a great suc­cess so far: We have already cov­ered the trav­el­ling costs and now we are fund­ing the pub­lish­ing costs. For us, crowd-fund­ing has opened up the tra­di­tion­al obsta­cles between cre­ators and read­ers. This sum­mer, with the help of all our sup­port­ers, we will retrace Basho’s Foot­steps.

Edi­tor’s note: This has been a guest post by Pablo Fer­nán­dez and Anya Gleiz­er. Please con­sid­er sup­port­ing their great project here. Also find trans­la­tions of Basho’s poet­ry in our col­lec­tion, 800 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices.