The Health-Food Diner by Maya Angelou: A Poet's Satrical Inclination and Doubts About Being a True Carnivore

No sprouted wheat and Soya shoots
and Brussels in a cake,
carrot straw and spinach raw,
today I need a steak.
Not thick brown rice and rice pilau
or mushrooms creamed on toast,
turnips mashed and parsnips hashed,
I'm dreaming of a roast.
Health food folks around the world
are thinned by anxious zeal,
they look for help in seafood kelp
I count on breaded veal.
No smoking signs, raw mustard greens,
and zucchini by the ton,
uncooked kale and bodies' frail
are sure to make me run.
Loins of pork and chicken thighs
and standing rib, so prime,
pork chops brown and fresh ground round
I crave them all the time.
Irish stews and boiled corned beef
and hot dogs by the scores,
or any place that saves a space
for carnivores. smoking
By Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson. Ms. Angelou is a true renaissance woman. Ms. Angelou is an author, a conductor, poet, historian, actress, singer, songwriter, playwright, film director, and civil rights activist. She was born in a segregated rural area in St. Louis, Arkansas and came from a broken home. She was tragically raped at eight, and was an unwed mother at 16 years old. However, throughout all of these hardships she became San Francisco's first black woman conductor and the first black woman to have an original screenplay produced in 1971, in Georgia. She has written several volumes of poetry about the emancipation, freedom, and the equality of African Americans, most particularly African American women.

I read this poem in College for my American Literature class. It is a different work from her more serious poems in that it is a satirical work about what is accepted in polite society. It is a brilliant reaction to the new wave overly health conscious 80's and new age 90's. Maya Angelou reveals her aversion to health food and her preference to being a carnivore when Ms. Angelou explains, "She will not have spouted wheat and Soya shoots and Brussels in a cake, carrot straw and spinach raw, today, the poet needs a steak."