Angelou takes on Hallmark challenge

By Jeannie Williams
USA Today

Writer Maya Angelou agreed to the Hallmark job so more people could read her work. Gannett Photo Network

The greeting-card giant had a tough time persuading the famed poet and memoirist to lend her name and words to a line of products. But this month, the Maya Angelou Life Mosaic Collection has arrived in stores.

It includes more than 100 greeting cards and a variety of decorative household items — bookends, pillows, wall hangings, journals, even mugs. Each card and product features writings by the 73-year-old author of "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," 90 percent of them just for Hallmark.

The Glorious Banquet Bowl, selling for $24.99, says "Life is a glorious banquet, a limitless and delicious buffet."

Angelou finds it "challenging and daring" to craft two-sentence sentiments.

"I have yellow pads all over the place," she says. She remembers reducing five pages to "The wise woman wishes to be no one's enemy, the wise woman refuses to be anyone's victim."

"When I finally got it just to those two lines," she says, "I came into the dining room and poured myself a glass of red wine."

Angelou says she knows she may be criticized by those wondering why a writer of her stature would undertake such a lucrative commercial venture.

"I'm sure I will be," she says. "But I have had criticism for a long time for different reasons." Her classic memoir, "I know Why the Caged Bird Sings," described her rape as a child.

Robert Loomis, her longtime editor at Random House, initially was unhappy with Angelou's decision to work with Hallmark.

"He said, 'You really are the American poet. All sorts of people read your poetry and take it to heart,' " Angelou says.

But she thought, "If I'm America's poet, or one of them, then I want to be in people's hands. All people's hands, people who would never buy a book."

Now, Loomis says he's impressed with what she has done for Hallmark. "I should have known that what she would do would be very telling," he says. "It's equal to anything she's written for us."

Hallmark had wooed Angelou for several years, but she turned them down because "I usually have so much on my platter, book writing, poetry, teaching."

Then, while lecturing 2 1/2 years ago in Kansas City, Mo., home of Hallmark, Angelou was invited to lunch with company executives.

"Their manners, their behavior pleased me no end," she says. "I think it's because they are still a family-owned business, but it's a huge business. Don Hall (Hallmark CEO and grandson of the founder) was there. And there were black people there, Spanish-speaking people and women. I liked all that."