The U.S. Postal Service is reportedly issuing a limited edition stamp honouring Maya Angelou with a quote attributed to the 86-year old American writer who died last year. However, authorship of the quote is being claimed by a children's book writer.
The quote in question is frequently attributed to the poet and civil rights activist. It goes as follows: "A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."
"Yes, that's my quote," author Joan Walsh Anglund told the Washington Post on Monday night. According to the newspaper, the quote is taken from Anglund's 1967 book of poems, A Cup of Sun. The pronouns are changed from "he" in Anglund's poem to "it" on the stamp, but that is reportedly the only change.
Postal Service spokesman Mark Saunders told the Washington Post that he was unaware of the Anglund quote, declaring that "numerous references" attributed the lines to Maya Angelou.
President Obama attributed the quote to Angelou during the presentation of the 2013 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal to the writer.
Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson in 1928, and in literature terms, is best known for her 1969 memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. As well as being a playwright, actor, director, singer and songwriter, she wrote seven autobiographies.
In 1993, she read On the Pulse of the Morning at President Clinton's first inauguration. The poem later became a best-seller. She died on May 28, 2014.
