![]() ![]() The universal values and insight in Angelou’s poetry and prose made Hallmark an ideal match for her. “By the end, she assumed the status of elder, teacher, and guide.” Angelou’s knowing sensibility, conveyed throughout her literary work, appealed to popular audiences, and Life Mosaic generated $45 million in its first five years for Hallmark and more than $4 million for the woman who inspirited it. “At the beginning of her literary career, readers viewed Angelou as friend, sister, and mentor,” explained African-American literature scholar Cheryl A. It valued her personal bond with the public. Life Mosaic traded on Angelou’s personal brand of poetic sentiment, indebtedness to African-American oral traditions, craft as a memoirist, and woman-centeredness. ![]() It was distinguishable from Mahogany, Hallmark’s first imprint, broadened in 1991, to target African Americans year-round. They were like keepsakes from Angelou’s poetic life, literary art you could use, gift, and display.Īngelou’s collaboration with Hallmark was bold and profitable. It included everything from inscribed bookends, bookmarks, and bookplates to recipe albums, picture frames, and treasure boxes. The product line with Hallmark became the Life Mosaic collection. ![]() “I try to live my life as a poetic adventure, everything I do from the way I keep my house, cook, make my husband happy, or welcome my friends, raise my son everything is a part of a large canvas I am creating, I am living beneath.” “My problem is I love life, I love living life and I love the art of living,” she said in a 1977 interview. Uplift was, actually, part of her writing style, and she viewed the collaboration with Hallmark as an opportunity to take her message of compassion, understanding, and transformation to a larger audience. She had entered the literary scene with an unflinching narrative about her rape as a child, self-imposed silence, sustained emotional resilience, and, finally, triumphant overcoming. “ Hallmark cards has always been a common phrase to describe verse that is really less than poetry because it is sentimental and unoriginal.”Īngelou’s words stirred emotions, though her life was no simple greeting card. “It lowers the understanding of what poetry actually can do,” Collins said to the Associated Press. Poet Laureate and a fellow Random House writer, questioned Angelou’s partnership with Hallmark, the largest manufacturer of greeting cards in the United States and, among the literati, commonly associated with trite expressions. ![]()
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