(waves crashing) Kathryn Waddell Takara: What I have seen cannot be sunsets and rainbows,  green forest and restive blue seas.

All naturally colored things are my siblings.

We have played  together on the floor of the world since the first stone looked up at the stars.

Dr.

Maya Angelou is  a poet, playwright, producer and author.

She is an actor, linguist, scholar and humanist.

She  is a lover of words.

For her accomplishments, Maya Angelou has been honored with numerous  honorary degrees and nominations for a Tony, Emmy and the Pulitzer Prize.

But she is perhaps  best known as the poet who read her poem on the pulse of the morning at the inauguration of  President Bill Clinton.

In the summer of 1994, Dr.

Angelou received the first Regent's  Medal of Distinction from the University of Hawaiʻi.

That evening, and later,  she demonstrated the power of her grace.

Maya Angelou: I thought this evening I would like to speak to you about romance, about love, all sorts  of love, but particularly romance.

Unfortunately, we don't think enough about romance after  we've reached a certain age or a certain stage, and yet a person or a people without romance  tend to be brutish and crass and superficial and mean spirited.

I think that young men and  women are not told often enough that romance is not only wonderful, it is imperative.

Because  they don't know it, they become superficial and much too accessible because they don't know that  there should be a period of dropping the eyes, and something to do with dropping the voice,  because they have come to a place where they say, what time is it?

You okay?

I'm okay.

Let's do  it.

They need to be reminded about romance.

Kathryn Waddell Takara: Maya Angelou, like the cherished ʻōhiʻa tree, springs from a crack in the hard  lava.

A seed takes root and grows from a string bean shrub to a mighty and magnificent  tree.

Echo her voice.

And my question is your ability to laugh.

How do you find your  laughter amidst this painful world, sometimes?

Maya Angelou: The truth is, every human being, everybody the most dour, sour, grumpy person, if she or he would  admit it.

He knows he's the funniest person in the world.

I mean, the gaffes we make, the foolish  statements we make, the gestures we make, the mistakes we make, are too funny.

So I go, I look  for that.

I look for the humor in myself first, and that lightens my load.

I never trust people  who say they are serious and act as if they put airplane glue on the back of their hands and stuck  them to their forehead, and they walk around being poor tinctures and all that.

I don't believe that.

If they really came here to make a difference, if they really came here to stay, if they really came  here to be of service, then they smile as much as possible, because the world will offer you every  reason, moment to moment to bemoan your outcast state.

All you have to do is wake up and you start  to stretch, and then you turn on the television and say, all of that country, the people that's  blood, and you turn the next channel, oh, yes, they've shot so many children.

The next channel.

Turn on the radio.

You can't believe it.

Pick up the telephone, someone says, girl, I hate to  tell you, but hang up the phone.

Go outside.

Your car has been stolen.

Oh, no, every reason in  the world.

So, when you can, you find something to smile about.

And the Judeo, Christian  Bible says a cheerful heart is good medicine.

Kathryn Waddell Takara: So, laughter is a form of healing.

What other things do you find as sources of  healing in your in your life, your personal life?

Maya Angelou: Poetry is healing.

The beauty of language is healing.

I was I was a mute for many years, and I used those years to listen to the human  voice.

And the truth is, I've never heard a human voice I disliked.

Never.

I have heard things the  voice said, or voices conveyed, which were hateful and cruel and brutish and brutal, but the voice  itself, I have never heard one I didn't like.

Kathryn Waddell Takara: Sounds like pearls roll off your tongue to grace this eager ebon ear, doubt and  fear ungainly things with blushings disappear.

Maya Angelou: So, poetry, when read, when spoken, can be healing.

And this is true  of the English rounds, the Elizabethan couplets, the West African chants, Japanese haiku, the  Bengali poetry of Rabindranath Tagore, all of all of it is healing when spoken by the human  voice.

So, I think poetry is music written for the human voice, and I use that to heal  myself when I like, when I'm feeling rough, maybe thrown away, maybe neglected.

I might  recite to myself some Shakespearean sonnet, or some African American poetry, or some  Native American poetry.

I would just find something to wash my body, wash me externally  with sound and wash me internally with intent.

Kathryn Waddell Takara: You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies.

You may trod me in the  very dirt, but still like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

Because I walk like I've got oil wells pumping in my living room?

Just like moon and like suns with  the certainty of tides, just like hopes springing high still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me  broken, bowed head and lowered eyes, shoulders falling down like teardrops weakened by my soulful  cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard because I laugh like I've  got gold mines digging in my own backyard?

You may shoot me with your words.

You may cut me with  your eyes.

You may kill me with your hatefulness, but still like air I'll rise.

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?

Out of the huts of history shame, I rise.

Up from a past that's rooted in pain,  I rise.

I'm a black ocean leaping and wide, welling and swelling, I bear in the tide,  leaving behind nights of terror and fear.

I rise, into a daybreak that's wondrously clear.

I  rise, bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave.

I am the dream and the hope of  the slave.

I rise, I rise, I rise.

Maya Angelou: I believe words are things.

In the Judeo-Christian Bible, and in many religious tracts from around  the world, there is a statement which is the word.

In the Judeo-Christian Bible, the statement is in  the beginning was the word.

And the word was God, and the word was with God, mysterious,  powerful word.

I realized that 75 years ago, if anyone had told anyone, the day will come when  you'll be able to plug in two little holes in the side of the wall, and you'll be able to watch  what's happening this minute in Paris, France, or Bosnia or Johannesburg, the person who told  that fable would be put into an insane asylum.

But now we know that the air is filled with  images, filled between me and thee.

There are billions of images.

I believe that words are  things.

I believe the time will come when we will be able to measure the impact of the cruel  word, or the kind word or and the kind word.

So, I think it is upon us.

We are beholden to say,  when the cruel word is spoken, stop it.

Don't bring it to me.

Don't put that on me.

That's  poison.

I don't take that and you must stop it.

I believe so.

I believe that a number of the  ailments that beset us, from arthritis to glaucoma to dental to caries, I believe a number of those  things are caused by bad words, bad intent.

Kathryn Waddell Takara: Today, you threaten to leave me.

I'd hold curses in my mouth which could flood  your path, sear bottomless chasms in your road.

I keep behind my lips invectives capable of tearing  the septum from your nostrils and the skin from your back.

Tears, copious as the spring rain  are checked in, ducks and screams are crowded in a corner of my throat.

You are leaving?

Aloud,  I say, I'll help you pack, but it's getting late.

I have to hurry or miss my date.

When I return, I  know you'll be gone.

Do drop a line or telephone.

Kathryn Waddell Takara: I heard once that the power of a negative word can travel continents away just one  or two words.

You would think that people would, upon hearing that, change their ways in order  to create goodness.

They say that there is a transcendent good in the world, in the world, I  mean people that that are optimistic I suppose.

Maya Angelou: I am one.

Yes, I believe that.

I believe that the good word has that much power  and maybe more.

I do believe it.

I think that we sometimes say we want change, but we don't  really want change.

What we want is exchange.

We don't want to change the form and the shape of  things.

What we want is give me everything you've got.

That's all because I'm envious of what you've  got.

So, when people say they want a better life, a life with more peace and generosity and laughter  and love, they don't really mean that.

Otherwise, they would be careful of the words  they use, because those words add to the wall of despair in the world.

If  they are negative words, I do believe it.

Kathryn Waddell Takara: Then who is it left to to teach people not to be in negativity?

Most  people would say that they are justified with their negativity.

It's all right  to feel bad.

It's a human thing to do.

Maya Angelou: It is human.

It certainly is not inhuman or a human.

No, it isn't.

It's human.

It's not the best  of what we are and can be.

But it is human.

It's human to bomb children.

It's human to bomb, to  bomb a children's home.

It's human because human beings do it.

I mean, it is not alligators, fleas,  these are human beings, and to assume that to be human is to be elevated.

No, we are all things.

We  are base and we are brilliant.

We are cruel and we are kind.

We must choose which side do we want to  be on?

You know, that's all.

And I know that there are teachers.

I know that I'm happy to know that  there are teachers who come to us to advise us, encourage us and strengthen us so that we can  take the advice and the instruction.

Finally, however, it is up to each of us, individually,  individually, to take that wisdom.

And we've been getting it for centuries.

It's not as if, oh,  boy, you know, they're just now for we've got these great masters and mistresses.

We've got  these great minds and spirits just now.

That's not true.

They've been along here all the time,  and quite often what we've done is kill them.

Kathryn Waddell Takara: What about though, then our communities?

When I speak of our communities, African American  communities, communities, the power of the word, the power of love.

Do you see any positive  direction that we can help that despair?

Maya Angelou: I do continue to hear the power of love in the church.

I do hear it, and  I hear it in the in the contemporary blues.

I do hear it.

Miss Aretha Franklin's song, which has  become almost as much a litany as Lift Every Voice and Sing and that is all I want you to do for me  is give me some respect when you come home.

Oh, baby.

Now that is really very, very important.

And  the lyrics and the spirituals, which continue to say, I'm somebody, I'm a child of God, and  what I want to do, really, is live a life.

Mahalia Jackson said, I want to live the life I  sing about in my song.

That's right, that's it.

Kathryn Waddell Takara: Do you have any advice for other young writers, or other people, say,  in developing their voice, their own voice?

Maya Angelou: Yes, I encourage writers to read.

Read everything, everything.

Just read and read aloud.

If you write in English or in whatever language is your writing language, make sure to spend at  least a few hours a week reading aloud in that language.

Go into your bedroom, close the door and  read, hear how the language can sound.

It just it, accustoms the body, not just the ear, but  through the ear.

It accustoms the body to rhythm, to whatever that rhythm is.

And I've I find  myself so sorely beset because I speak a number of languages, but I don't read well enough in  any save Spanish and French to read the work in the original.

So, what I have to do when I read  other Primo Levi, for instance, in the Italian, I can work through it.

Alberto Maravi, I can work  through it with because I have enough Italian, but it will never be, it will never soar like his  voice.

Or Dacia Maraini, who is an Italian woman writer who I love, and what I'm really loving is  the translation.

This is true of Ōe Kenzaburō, all I'm really loved.

I don't know the language.

I can't I can't read Kōbō Abe.

I cannot and and I'm lessened, but I do at least read it.

But  read everything.

Read Gorky.

Feel that.

I mean, it's like having a mission and tyre in your  hand, you know, even reading the translation.

So, I would say to every writer you want to  write, read everybody.

There's a poem I really, I just it's so wonderful that it's written,  was written by Edison Vincent Millay.

Okay, so you have to see this little white woman who was  much beloved and certainly highly regarded as a poet in the 20s.

Thin.

puny, wan, ashen, weak,  physically and about to become the recluse she did become.

She wrote, I shall die, but that is  all I will do for death.

I hear his horse's hoofs on the stalls.

He has business this morning,  business in the Balkans, business in Cuba, but he must mount by himself.

I will not give  him a leg up.

I am not in his employ.

I will die, but that is all I will do for death.

With his  horse's hoofs on my chest, I will not tell him where the black boy lies hidden in the swamp.

I  will not mount him a route to any man or woman's door.

Brothers and sisters, the keys and the  plans to the city are safe with me.

Through me, you will never be overcome, for I shall die,  but that is all I will do for death.

Hello!

Kathryn Waddell Takara: I would like to ask you, if you have any memories of your stay  here in Hawaiʻi?

I remember that you had been here at least a couple  of times, if not more before.

And what is it about the islands that you remember  that you take with you from early days to now?

Maya Angelou: It's amazing.

I came back to Hawaiʻi a few years ago, a couple of years ago, with  trepidation.

I knew how popular Waikīkī had become, and I had known it in 1956.

I  had sung in a club called The Clouds.

Kathryn Waddell Takara: The clouds, how beautiful that was in the poem.

Maya Angelou: Which was opposite the Queen Surf Hotel, and there was a little park and a zoo nearby.

And  I brought my son here when he was just, you know, before he reached the teens, I think he may have  been 10, and we both fell in love with Hawaiʻi, and the people were so kind.

And I was a single  parent and a black woman very young, because if he was 10, I was 26 or something, and people were  very kind.

And I think he looks as if he could be from Hawaiʻi.

He did.

And so I would lose him  with the children out on the on the in the water, because he looked like all the rest of the kids  in the water.

And people would find him and bring him to me, and I felt myself very much at home.

So, I arranged to come here for almost no money, twice a year to sing at The Clouds.

I was  apprehensive about coming back, but I am amazed to find the spirit of Hawaiʻi still here, still  here.

And last night, when Noenoe Zuttermeister and the beautiful male dancer danced, I was  assured that the ancestors are still here, and that spirit, that huge spirit, has not been  taken down.

The Spirit is here, tangible, yes.

Kathryn Waddell Takara: And then, did you come for more than one year?

Did you come?

Maya Angelou: Oh, yes, I came until almost into the 60s.

I came.

Kathryn Waddell Takara: Do you have a vision of either the world or your place in the world, or people's place in  the world?

Kind of an ideal or dream or a hope.

Maya Angelou: Oh, I have all of those.

I tell you what I've found so far, I  find I know nothing.

The more I think I know, the more I'm convinced that I know absolutely  nothing.

I have great hopes, and I see us as a splendid set of outrageous creatures who  have just really come here.

We are the latest group made.

The reptiles were on this little  blob of spitting sand for 200 million years.

We just climbed out of the trees 25 billion years  ago.

Madam Sun Yat Sen says we haven't climbed the trees yet, but we are new, and here we are a  carnivorous group who decided not only not to eat our brothers and sisters, who are probably  delicious, but to accord them some rights, and to go further than that, to try to love them,  whatever that mystery is.

So, we are magnificent.

We have magnificence written into our DNA, if we  can just stay alive long enough.

Einstein said, no, no genius has ever used more than 18% of  his or her mental machine.

Now just imagine if geniuses use 30% and smart people like you  use 23% and just ordinary people used 18%.

Maya Angelou: Can you imagine what this, what we could how we could live with some  peace and some grace and some beauty?

Just imagine?

If I have anything  to look at, I look forward to that.

Kathryn Waddell Takara: Maya Angelou in the dawn of her day, opportunity was slow in  coming, but like the ʻōhiʻa lehua, she rises above the clouds out of barren lava  and gives us blossoms of intimate words and hope, which heals like night's first star or a  moon nearly full in a summer Hawaiian sky.

Maya Angelou: (singing)