Obama win shook Angelou

RALEIGH, N.C. – Upon his election in 1992, Bill Clinton asked Maya Angelou to compose a poem and read it at his inauguration. Angelou feels a new poem welling up inside her following Barack Obama’s election, but she does not expect another command performance.

“I’m sure Mr. Obama, president-elect, will have them bring his own poet,” the 80-year-old writer said. “I was somebody else’s poet.”

The author of such books as “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” said she had a visceral, physical reaction when Obama was declared the winner late Tuesday.

“First I laughed,” she told the Associated Press in a telephone interview. “Before I could finish laughing, I wept. Then I shook. I mean, I trembled. You know, the old meaning of the word ‘thrill’ has a physical aspect. It’s like, ‘Brrrrr!’ My body started shaking.”