Dunbar and Angelou on Caged Birds

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Monday – Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

While most people associate the line “I know why the caged bird sings” with Maya Angelou’s account of her childhood, she borrows the line from Paul Laurence Dunbar’s magnificent poem “Sympathy.” In the last stanza Dunbar writes,

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,–
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings–
I know why the caged bird sings!

After borrowing the line for her autobiography, Angelou then wrote her own “caged bird” poem. In her case, she contrasts the life of a bird that is caged with that of a bird that is free. I share her poem on Martin Luther King Day since he dreamed of a world in which everyone would be able to (in Angelou’s words) “leap on the back of the wind” and “dare[ ] to claim the sky”:

Caged Bird
By Maya Angelou

A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind   
and floats downstream   
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and   
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings   
with a fearful trill   
of things unknown   
but longed for still   
and his tune is heard   
on the distant hill   
for the caged bird   
sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams   
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream   
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied   
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings   
with a fearful trill   
of things unknown   
but longed for still   
and his tune is heard   
on the distant hill   
for the caged bird   
sings of freedom.

Further thought: Yesterday, in our church’s Sunday Forum, we heard our Christian Formation Director, Jeanne Babb, give a talk on the role of music in non-violent resistance. As Jeannie cited various instances of the power of music, I thought back to a workshop I attended on Johns Island, South Carolina when I was a junior in high school.

The workshop was organized by legendary human rights worker Esau Jenkins, an African American businessman who set up adult literacy and citizenship classes for poor Blacks in the 1960s, as well as services for migrant and seasonal farm workers. My most vivid memory of the workshop is the half hour we spent singing freedom songs that had been adapted from spirituals. Not much adaptation was needed for many of songs since the spirituals had always been about freedom, only in disguise.   

Response from Reader Carl Rosin:

Thanks for this post, Robin. Angelou’s poem always makes me think of the musical concept of sampling: has the artist transformed the original enough to make it a new work, or is it derivative? Did Dunbar (whom I love: his “We Wear the Mask” strikes me as one of the five most powerful American poems of the past 150 years) really need an update — a cover version, to go back to the musical parlance?

What I appreciate most about Angelou is that her effort (successfully, nobly) reacquainted a modern audience with a poet who had slipped (undeservedly, sadly) into relative anonymity. She’s the country singer who reminds people how great Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” is. I don’t have an opinion on the country song, by the way, but I do tend to evaluate Angelou’s “Caged Bird” as not nearly as great a poem as it is often made out to be.

My Response to Carl

I love this observation, Carl, which has gotten me thinking about “derivative,” sometimes seen as the ultimate poetic insult. (“His lips curled into a derisive sneer as he looked up from the manuscript. ‘It’s derivative,’ he said, casting the pages contemptuously on the floor.”) In Harold Bloom’s “anxiety of influence” drama, authors are involved in an Oedipal battle with their predecessors, either finding their own voice or remaining forever in thrall to those giants that came before (as, to use one of his examples, Oscar Wilde as poet was to Keats). But some feminists have counterargued that, for women writers at least, it’s more like a community, where you feel nurtured by your predecessors rather than in competition with them. Angelou’s poem feels more in that vein. She freely acknowledges her debt, is grateful to it, and expands upon Dunbar vision.

For readers unfamiliar with Dunbar’s powerful poem, which I too love, here it is:

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
       We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
       We wear the mask!