Maya Angelou’s Partnership with Hallmark

I’d forgotten about this completely… fascinating read:

Billy Collins, then U.S. 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.

ā€œIt lowers the understanding of what poetry actually can do,ā€ Collins said to the Associated Press. ā€œHallmark cardsĀ has always been a common phrase to describe verse that is really less than poetry because it is sentimental and unoriginal.ā€

Source: Why Maya Angelou Partnered with Hallmark | The National Endowment for the Humanities