Literary Exposé
By: Dylan Emerick-Brown
Published:12/28/13
Published:12/28/13
A woman dressed smartly yet still attractively struts towards you down the street with confidence in her eyes - focused. One hand rests on her hip while the other swings fore and aft. Without blinking she passes you on her way, leaving you with only a brief memory and a fragrance trailing, ephemerally, behind. She’s turned a corner and is gone, but what is that enchanting smell hanging in the air? Something sweet? Musky? No, it smells like overcoming adversity!
Beyonce, the acclaimed singer and cultural icon known the world over has a new fragrance coming out in early 2014. So why is this of interest to someone reading a literary publication? Because Queen Bey has announced that her new perfume was inspired by , her favorite poem by Pulitzer Prize winner Maya Angelou.
“The spirit of Rise [her perfume] encourages women to be all that we are,” Beyonce said in a press release. The perfume follows Beyonce’s other fragrances, Heat and Pulse, and will be shipped in time for Valentine’s Day to over 30,000 retailers. But wait? What does any of this have to do with a poem written by the woman who was active in the Civil Rights Movement with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X and recited her poem On the Pulse of Morning at President Bill Clinton’s inaugural address?
The poem - for those of you who may be unfamiliar with it - is about overcoming adversity, both personally and culturally from an African-American woman’s perspective. It begins with:
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I rise.
and ends with:
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
I can just smell it now. So I wondered, what would Maya Angelou’s reaction be to Beyonce interpreting one of her beloved poems on trumping hard times and misfortune into a fragrance for women?
“I’m pleased,” Angelou responded via phone.
“You’re pleased?” I responded.
“Of course,” she said, nonchalant.
Then surely, one would assume who better to show off the new perfume of 2014 than the woman herself? I had to ask, “did you buy it?”
“No, no...”
Ouch. So I wondered: we have an acclaimed poem that was the center of an advertising campaign for the United Negro College Fund being construed into a commercialized fragrance sold in shopping malls. I felt like I was lost in Alice’s Wonderland where Lebron James was creating a new, dope shoe brand for walking by woods on a snowy evening.
So my last question to Dr. Angelou was, “How would you want people to react to a scent inspired by your poem?”
“That it encourages people to stand...to rise no matter what happens to you.”
My mind reeled. Equality by Mandela: a strong cologne with hints of spice, musk, and anti-apartheid fervor. Resist by Gandhi: a floral fragrance with a dash of curry and a quiet protest of...is that coriander? Carry On by Churchill and Lust by Mother Teresa.
Marsha Brooks, the vice president of global marketing for Coty Beauty said of Rise, “This is sexy and sophisticated. We tested it in multiple countries with excellent results.”
Sudan? Syria? Haiti? Or was it tested only in countries with strife where people could afford to smell like triumph over hardship (whatever that smells like...sweat?)?
As a lover of literature in all its myriad forms, I initially found creating a perfumed scent inspired by a poem about overcoming adversity comical and somewhat perverse. But perhaps I’m being unfair. On the one hand, someone can look at this strange scenario as serious poetry with a deeply tragic and powerful meaning being commercialized like using Walt Whitman to advertise lawn mowers. All right, I’m getting a little esoteric now. On the other hand, perhaps this is a serendipitous avenue for bringing poetry otherwise unread by younger generations to the forefront of pop culture?
From my perspective - that of a high school English teacher - I can probably count on one hand the number of my students who could tell me the title of one of Angelou’s poems. I had a student earlier this year ask if Edgar Allen Poe was an English author and more than I care to admit reacted to the mention of Mark Twain as, “I’ve heard of that guy.” So, I suppose I shouldn’t get too jaded if America’s youth is introduced to poetry via pop-stars as opposed to our education system. But part of me wonders - like the student who said Romeo and Juliet was a great movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and had no clue who Shakespeare was - if we’re simply diluting literary relevancy.
I will leave that challenge, subjective as it is to the reader (and author) - up to you. I hope you will rise to it.
Beyonce, the acclaimed singer and cultural icon known the world over has a new fragrance coming out in early 2014. So why is this of interest to someone reading a literary publication? Because Queen Bey has announced that her new perfume was inspired by , her favorite poem by Pulitzer Prize winner Maya Angelou.
“The spirit of Rise [her perfume] encourages women to be all that we are,” Beyonce said in a press release. The perfume follows Beyonce’s other fragrances, Heat and Pulse, and will be shipped in time for Valentine’s Day to over 30,000 retailers. But wait? What does any of this have to do with a poem written by the woman who was active in the Civil Rights Movement with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X and recited her poem On the Pulse of Morning at President Bill Clinton’s inaugural address?
The poem - for those of you who may be unfamiliar with it - is about overcoming adversity, both personally and culturally from an African-American woman’s perspective. It begins with:
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I rise.
and ends with:
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
I can just smell it now. So I wondered, what would Maya Angelou’s reaction be to Beyonce interpreting one of her beloved poems on trumping hard times and misfortune into a fragrance for women?
“I’m pleased,” Angelou responded via phone.
“You’re pleased?” I responded.
“Of course,” she said, nonchalant.
Then surely, one would assume who better to show off the new perfume of 2014 than the woman herself? I had to ask, “did you buy it?”
“No, no...”
Ouch. So I wondered: we have an acclaimed poem that was the center of an advertising campaign for the United Negro College Fund being construed into a commercialized fragrance sold in shopping malls. I felt like I was lost in Alice’s Wonderland where Lebron James was creating a new, dope shoe brand for walking by woods on a snowy evening.
So my last question to Dr. Angelou was, “How would you want people to react to a scent inspired by your poem?”
“That it encourages people to stand...to rise no matter what happens to you.”
My mind reeled. Equality by Mandela: a strong cologne with hints of spice, musk, and anti-apartheid fervor. Resist by Gandhi: a floral fragrance with a dash of curry and a quiet protest of...is that coriander? Carry On by Churchill and Lust by Mother Teresa.
Marsha Brooks, the vice president of global marketing for Coty Beauty said of Rise, “This is sexy and sophisticated. We tested it in multiple countries with excellent results.”
Sudan? Syria? Haiti? Or was it tested only in countries with strife where people could afford to smell like triumph over hardship (whatever that smells like...sweat?)?
As a lover of literature in all its myriad forms, I initially found creating a perfumed scent inspired by a poem about overcoming adversity comical and somewhat perverse. But perhaps I’m being unfair. On the one hand, someone can look at this strange scenario as serious poetry with a deeply tragic and powerful meaning being commercialized like using Walt Whitman to advertise lawn mowers. All right, I’m getting a little esoteric now. On the other hand, perhaps this is a serendipitous avenue for bringing poetry otherwise unread by younger generations to the forefront of pop culture?
From my perspective - that of a high school English teacher - I can probably count on one hand the number of my students who could tell me the title of one of Angelou’s poems. I had a student earlier this year ask if Edgar Allen Poe was an English author and more than I care to admit reacted to the mention of Mark Twain as, “I’ve heard of that guy.” So, I suppose I shouldn’t get too jaded if America’s youth is introduced to poetry via pop-stars as opposed to our education system. But part of me wonders - like the student who said Romeo and Juliet was a great movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and had no clue who Shakespeare was - if we’re simply diluting literary relevancy.
I will leave that challenge, subjective as it is to the reader (and author) - up to you. I hope you will rise to it.