The US postal service on Tuesday is unveiling a new stamp to honor one of the country’s mot celebrated writers – but the government agency may have made a basic editing error.
The new forever stamp features an oil painting of Maya Angelou, alongside the quote: “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.”
But on Monday, another author took credit for the line.
The children’s book author Joan Walsh Anglund told the Washington Post that the quote is hers. It appears in Anglund’s poem book A Cup of Sun, which was published in 1967.
The version that appears on the stamp is not exactly the same as it appears in Anglund’s book, however. In Anglund’s version, the line says “he” instead of “it”.
While Anglund took credit for the line, it is widely attributed to Angelou, who died at 86 at her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, last May. Barack Obama cited the quote when he presented Angelou with the 2013 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal.
The postal service initially defended itself by saying the quote is associated with Angelou, but when the Washington Post contacted them again after Anglund confirmed she wrote the line, the agency’s tenor changed: “Had we known about this issue beforehand, we would have used one of [Angelou’s] many other works ... The sentence held great meaning for her and she is publicly identified with its popularity.”
Anglund said she loves Angelou’s work and was not fussed by the discovery.
“It’s an interesting connection, and interesting it would happen and already be printed and on her stamp,” Anglund said. “I love her and all she’s done, and I also love my own private thinking that also comes to the public because it comes from what I’ve been thinking and how I’ve been feeling.”
