who promptly invites Maya over for dinner one night and to meet the kids. Maya turns down the invitation saying she works nights. She hasn't quite accepted the fact that white women are as serious in interracial marriages as the white men. She recalls a statement circulating around the Negro neighborhood that warned: "Be careful of white women with colored men. They might marry and bear children but when they get what they want out of the men, they leave their children and go back to their own people." Maya knows that the logic of the warning does not hold because few Negro men in the interracial marriages that she had seen had very much money. Plus, the women could have had the sex without the marriage. Plus, mothers leave their children very rarely; such an incident is cause for a newspaper story. The woman, Maya Angelou, in Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas and the woman in the interviews of the 1970's are indeed the same women, but the extent of emotional and psychological growth is amazing. The hard times are not wasted. The good times are not taken for granted. All the times of Maya Angelou's life mean something. Time does not pass empty and secretly. Her philosophy is touching and a little eerie. "Whenever I danced non-angelically on the point of a pin, I always knew I might slip and break my neck. It could be fatal, but at least all anxiety would cease." For that reason she often rushes toward "holocausts with an abandon that caused observers to think of me as courageous." The truth is that she just wants to put an end to uncertainty. When nearing the end of her tour with the "Porgy and Bess" company, Maya receives an urgent message from home concerning her son. She returns home to find a son different from the one she had left. He is quite distant and mysteriously ill. Maya's attitude toward life takes a drastic change to the point of feeling almost suicidal. She feels she has ruined her son by neglect and neither she nor her son would ever forgive her. "It was time to commit suicide, to put an end to accusations and guilt." She wonders if she dares die alone, what would happen to her son? She realizes the impact of her temporary absence on her son and fears the impact of a permanent absence. "I brought him into this world and I was responsible for his life. So must the thoughts wind around the minds of insane parents who kill their children and then themselves." Maya gets help from a relative and is able to open up more to her son, thus re-establishing their close relationship. In a 1975 interview with the San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle Maya Angelou sums up her self and shows the work of confidence that could only come about through the struggle for success and the sweet success of the struggle. I do the best I can with everything. I have no apologies. That doesn't mean I don't do things that displease me. I do. I have some automatic responses I'm not proud of, but I hope I'll work on those and make myself a better person. But in every instance I bring all my stuff into it all my equipment. Now if you walk away from me and not like me, I gave you all I've got. That's your business, not mine. I hope next year, if we do this again, I hope to be brighter, I hope to be funnier, I hope I will have learned by next year to be even more total. But right now I cannot be better than I am. I'm holding nothing back. Surely Maya Angelou is aware that through revealing herself and her feelings she also reveals some universal, deep-rooted attitudes of Blacks in general. Her aim is to shed new light on such ideas concerning whites, Black oppression, complex relationships. With her creativity and confidence, everything is within reach. 'Walter Blum, "Listening to Maya Angelou," San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle, 14 December 1975, p. 14. 2Linda Kuehl, rev. of Singin' and Swingin' by Maya Angelou, Saturday Review, 30 October 1976, p. 46. 3Howard Taylor, "She Wants to Change TV's Image of Blacks," New York Times, 22 April 1979, section 2, p. 35. 4Maya Angelou, "Harlem Hopscotch," from Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'For I Diiie (Mew York: Random House 1971, Bantam Books 1973, 1974, 1976). Sect. 2. LONELINESS by LaVon B. Carroll The moon shines through a film of cobweb tonight, The stars are dusty and the clouds are gauzy rags that trail in a wintery wind, I shiver my threadbare dreams will scarcely cover me anymore. There are thin shadows on all the furthest reaches of the heart, like sharp, black branches etched on snowfields under starlight, as though embroidered by some patient, slender, blueveined hand condemned to work this tapestry of night. by Sherree Luke The falling star slits The ebony velvet canopy Slashing perfection. The tears lay frozen In unblinking eyes. Making A crystal light. 22 Lucinda Shuft SONG OF THE WANDERER by Sheldon Talbot There was a time when everything was too Ordinary, and all the movement of The branches through the air and the sound of The cursed cars with their squabbling, moaning And the cries of the people did nothing For me, I walked the streets and sang private Songs to myself. All the world was a haze Of melted sound and smoke and a chaos Of primordial beatings, and I cried. But now I leave the mundane and wander Through the genesis of my existence And see the sum of beauty in a mother's Brow, and a child's smile. All-present nature Shows through the clattering of sidewalk steps And the clouds that hide the sun and shows her Face, and I kiss it and wander with her. SHATTERED SUCKERS by Ken Spencer Shattered suckers, melted tootsie rolls, Life-savers that have no holes. And if it never takes me back To an evening in a snuggle-sack I still have half-a-pack of shattered suckers. Lifeless licorice and juiceless fruits, Tootie-fruities that have no toots. And if it never makes me smile In remembrance of a little while I still have half-a-mile of licorice whips. Old cotton candy, ice cream sticks, Ooie gooies and sticky icks. And if I never have any more Nervous moments by a quiet door I still have half-a-drawer of dusty cotton candy. 23