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Quote by Maya Angelou

Work

The Complete Poetry

This volume presents the complete collection of poetry by an individual poet, bringing together all known poems, verses, and lyrical works into one definitive edition. Such collections typically include the author's major poetry collections previously published separately, as well as any unpublished, lesser-known, or newly discovered poems compiled from various sources. The arrangement often follows chronological order or the poet's own preferred organization, sometimes including early works, transitional pieces, and later compositions. A complete poetry edition serves as a reference for scholars, students, and general readers seeking to engage with the full breadth of a poet's artistic output and poetic evolution over time. more

Author

Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou was an American author, poet, playwright, actress, and lecturer, known for her profound exploration of race, gender, and culture in her work. Her autobiographical works, including 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,' which detailed her early life of poverty and sexual exploitation, have gained widespread acclaim. more

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“Since you walked out on me I'm getting lovelier by the hour. I glow like a corpse in the dark. No one sees how round and sharp my eyes have grown how my carcass looks like a glass urn, how I hold up things in the rags of my hands, the way I can stand through crippled by lust. No, there's just your cruelty circling my head like a bright rotting halo.”

“You thought I was that type: that you could forget me, and that I'd plead and weep and throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare, or that I'd ask the sorcerers for some magic potion made from roots and send you a terrible gift: my precious perfumed handkerchief. Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul vicarious tears or a single glance. And I swear to you by the garden of the angels, I swear by the miracle-working ikon, and by the fire and smoke of our nights: I will never come back to you.”

“Did you love well what very soon you left? Come home and take me in your arms and take away this stomach ache, headache, heartache. Never so full, I never was bereft so utterly. The winter evenings drift dark to the window. Not one work will make you, where you are, turn in your day, or wake from your night toward me. The only gift I got to keep or give is what I've cried, floodgates let down to mourning for the dead chances, for the end of being young, for everyone I loved who really died. I drank our one year out in brine instead of honey from the seasons of your tongue.”

“For this my mother wrapped me warm, And called me home against the storm, And coaxed my infant nights to quiet, And gave me roughage in my diet, And tucked me in my bed at eight, And clipped my hair, and marked my weight, And watched me as I sat and stood: That I might grow to womanhood To hear a whistle and drop my wits And break my heart to clattering bits.”

“Love was like rain: it turned into ice, or it disappeared. Now you saw it, now you couldn't find it no matter how hard you might search. Love evaporated; obsession was realer; it hurt, like a pin in your bottom, a stone in your shoe. It didn't go away in the blink of an eye. A morning phone call filled with regret. A letter that said, Dear you, good-bye from me. Obsession tasted like something familiar. Something you'd known your whole life. It settled and lurked; it stayed with you.”

“... somehow I couldn't stop. I had turned into someone that I would have pitied in another life; someone who searched for signs, who analyzed patterns, who went over every word in a conversation looking for hidden meanings, secret signals, the subtext that said, Yes, I still love you, of course I still love you.”