SOURCE: “Poetry as Politics: Maya Angelou's Inaugural Poem, ‘On the Pulse of Morning,’” in Notes on Contemporary Literature, Vol. XXVIII, No. 1, January, 1999, pp. 2–5.

In the following essay, Coulthard argues that “On the Pulse of Morning” is a bad poem, sloppy in construction, and hackneyed in content.

Since Maya Angelou delivered her Clinton inaugural poem, she has shot onto the bestseller list, performed in a film titled (ironically enough) “Poetic Justice,” and, if a mind-boggling news snippet is correct, reported 1995 earnings of 4.2 million dollars. “On the Pulse of Morning” recently was set to music and performed by the Winston-Salem Symphony as testimony to its enduring fame. When I ask my literature majors to nominate the best living American poet, Ms. Angelou always gets several enthusiastic mentions. Never in the long course of literary history has so much been made of, and from, so little.

Polemical is almost always bad...