I just received a poem that according to the email was written my Maya Angelou. I thought the poem was decent enough to consider posting on my site. Before I posted it though, I wanted to verify that it was indeed by Maya Angelou. I searched for a couple of lines along with “Maya Angelou” and got back some 342,000 results. I go through the first few pages of results and they are all blogs. “Surely,” I think, “there would be reputable online sources for the text of poems by the great Maya Angelou.” Something must be wrong. I click on one link by chance that is also a blog with the poem posted. There was a comment on the blog post that said that Maya Angelou did not write this poem and included a link to Maya Angelou’s own site where is expressly says that she has no affiliation with this poem.

I guess someone thought that by attaching Dr. Angelou’s name to the poem that people would be more apt to listen to it. Perhaps. While I liked the message of the poem, I could tell that Dr. Angelou did not write this poem simply because she is typically very figurative with her words (I like the pretty words) and this poem is written very plainly.

While I admit that this isn’t a major issue compared to others but I find it interesting that with the vast resources of information available on the internet that misinformation still seems to travel faster than fact. Oh well.

I’m posting the poem anyway but as Author Unknown. Update the author is Pamela Redmond Satran.

You might also be interested in:

• No Related Post