Maya Angelou On The Pulse Of Morning

Throughout the many inaugurations of the President of the United States, only a few Presidents have given an inaugural poem along with their speech. Two exceptional examples are from both of President Bill Clinton’s inaugurations with Maya Angelou’s “On the Pulse of Morning” in 1993 and Miller Williams’ “Of History and Hope” in 1997. These two poems follow a similar theme of hope and optimism for the future. To portray their theme, the poets use a narrator to unite people together for a better future filled with hope and ambition. By using narration the poets can connect with readers and successfully develop their message of hope at the dawn of a new president’s term.

In Maya Angelou’s “On the Pulse of Morning” she reads the poem through

Angelou personifies the Earth as the Rock, the River, and the Tree using three perspectives to represent aspects of the planet. Both the Rock and the River cry out to humanity for all of our misdeeds done through war and pollution that have scarred the planet. Angelou portrays the narrators as higher beings when compared to humans as expressed, “Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your/Brow and when you yet knew you still/Knew nothing.” (37-39). In this passage, the River scolds humanity that they still do not truly understand the weight of their actions through the use of antithesis “...when you yet knew you still/Knew nothing.” (38-39). However, the perspective of the Tree differs from the other two in that the Tree calls for humanity to confront the past as “History, despite its wrenching pain/Cannot be unlived, but if faced/With courage, need not be lived again.” (74-76). This is the very essence of Angelou’s poem that we must face our past to create a better tomorrow echoing the inaugural theme of President Bill Clinton as well. Furthermore, Angelou suggests that it takes everyone to create hope as iterated through the

Unlike Angelou, Williams uses one narrator throughout the poem that speaks of history and the future. Throughout the poem, we is used instead of I to allow the narrator to create unity amongst Americans that it takes everyone to create a better America, similar to Angelou. Williams goes on to suggest that the future remains uncertain, but hope relies on the children using repetition as expressed “But how do we fashion the future?...The children. The children. And how does our garden grow?” (13-15). Williams continues to have the narrator use repetition of who, whose, and we in the third stanza that Americans have to face their past to have a better tomorrow as we have done before and must do now “We know what we have done and what we have said,/and how we have grown, degree by slow degree,/believing ourselves toward all we have tried to become—/just and compassionate, equal, able, and free.” (26-29). Williams and Angelou both share the common idea of using history to learn to discover hope and have a better future. Whereas Angelou's use of the Earth as a narrator raises the stakes of the poem suggesting that America must create a better future, Williams’ single narrator creates smaller stakes but remains just