Although Angelou has a distinguished resume dating to civil rights work with Dr. Martin Luther King, she became a household name in 1993 after reading a poem at Bill Clinton's inauguration. (Angelou could not have imagined how horrifically some of her poem's imagery would describe the incoming administration -- when she wrote, for example, of proud entities "thrusting perpetually under siege" or suggested that a listener take his "most private need" and "sculpt it into the image of your most public self.")
Hallmark doesn't plan to launch the line until 2002, but we figured Angelou might want to practice and, at the same time, send a greeting to her most famous patron on the occasion of his leaving office. In fact, Pitch Weekly has recently discovered some of Angelou's discarded notes, in which she appears to be reworking the famous refrain from "The Rock Cries Out to Us Today" in Hallmarky verse:
Today, the Rock cries out to us,
clearly, forcefully,
Telling us, In case I haven't told you lately
I'm glad we're friends.
Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more.
Wouldn't it be nice if our lives were like
VCRs
and we could "fast forward"
through the crummy times?
I, the rock, I the river, I the tree
know it's hard to say goodbye to a pet.
Hope you know caring thoughts are
with you, especially now.
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