Lucille Clifton The Poet and Her Style - Essay Example

 Lucille Clifton: The poet and her style Lucille Clifton is an Afro American poet and her writing is typical of a black woman writer. Her themes are almost always traditional. She writes much about her family and roots, trying to make sense to lives of her own and the people around her. She writes about the ghetto community; the adversities of the ghetto life, and about the rare good times there. She upholds her pride in being a black, and in being a woman. Most of the critics find her writing redeeming. Her style is what the critics call “minimalistic”.There are only few strong stresses in each line. Many poems total fewer than twenty lines. “Write truth, write with both intelligence and intuition, and write to celebrate, not to be celebrated”---- This is the philosophy of Lucille Clifton as summarized by her biographer Mary Jane Lupton (Her lasting gift – the last chapter of the biography of Lucille Clifton by Mary Jane Lupton) WOMANHOOD: Lucille Clifton’s poems celebrate womanhood. A typical example is her “Poem in praise of menstruation”. It compares the menstrual flow to a river “bright as blood red edge of the moon” A river so faithful, “returning each month to the same delta”. “Pray that it flows also/through animals/ beautiful and faithful and ancient/ and female and brave” (Poem in praise of menstruation -- poems of Lucille Clifton – www. Poemhunter.com).According to Hilary Halladay the poem is a celebration of women’s fertility. It fuses images of nature, female sexuality, and matriarchal mythology. “The poem transcends the familiar taboo surrounding the fertile woman and menstruation becomes an awe-inspiring life force” (Hillary Holladay, on “poem to my uterus” and “to my last period” ---Modern American poetry--- www. English.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/Clifton/uterus.htm) Her “poem to my uterus” and “to my last period” are companion pieces. “In “poem to the uterus” the speaker and her sense of femininity will be forever changed by the loss of her uterus, but the poem highlights the more important need to forge a new femininity.” (Lisa Dunick –on “poem to my uterus” and “to my last period” --- Modern American poetry---ww.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/Clifton/uterus.htm). “To my last period” also is a poem in the similar lines. It combines the femininity and separate subjectivity of the speaker. Some critics see this poem as a radical revision of the tradition of ode writing. Odes are generally Authored by males. Here is an ode by a female. The content and form of this ode are not traditional too. Knowing Clifton’s pride for being a woman is essential to know her relationships, especially with her mother and father. Knowing these relationships is again essential to understand the tone of her poem “Forgiving my father” MOTHER: THE MAJOR INFLUENCE: In her mini-biography, “On Strength Gotten from Others”, Lucille Clifton recollects an incident when she was just five years old. It was the annual Christmas program of Macedonia Baptist Church. All young Sunday school children were given poems and recitations to memorize. She forgot her lines, while standing on the stage in new Christmas dress. As the audience got restive, she was about to cry. She felt humiliated and embarrassed... “Then, like a great tidal wave from the ocean of God, my “Sanctified mother” poured down the Baptist aisle, huge as love, her hand outstretched toward mine” she continues to describe the scene very poetically. “Come on, baby,” she smiled, then turned to address the church: “she don’t have to do nothing, she don’t want to do” (On Strength Gotten from Others, a mini- biography – Lucille Clifton—www.math.buffallo.edu) she felt empowered and free .This incident of the childhood, remembered and retold by the poet, shows how important a person her mother was to her in life. In November 1984, her husband of almost 30 years died. “When I retreat into my room to just sit and stare or cry I can hear my mama speak through my four daughters ---“She don’t have to act strong if she don’t want to” (On Strength Gotten from Others ---- A mini-biography, Lucille Clifton –www.math.buffallo.edu) Her mother Thelma sayles was a struggling woman, trying hard to bring up the family almost by her own. She was a launderer. She was a poet too and was the daughter’s major source of inspiration. Though she had not completed elementary school, Thelma was very imaginative and a practitioner of the “iambic verse”, that’s the traditional English verse. She naturally disagreed with her daughter’s style of writing, which was not traditional. Her biographer, Mary Jane Lupton, recollects how Lucille mimicked her mother during a conversation, saying “Baby, that ain’t no poem. Let me show you how to write a poem” (Lucille Clifton--- Mary Jane Lupton --- page 13) Thelma, the mother was a beautiful woman, slightly plump and with thick hair who sat by the window smiling, according to Lucille’s sister. Lucille remembers her “sanctified mother”, one day, burning her own Poems. “ An event that she was later to record in her poem “Fury : for mama”: “remember this…/the coals glistening like rubies/her hand is crying /her hand is clutching/a sheaf of papers/poems/she gives them up” ( Lucille Clifton - Mary Jane Lupton --- page 14 ) FORGIVING THE FATHER: Her mother burned her poems because her husband Samuel sayles did not want her to publish them. He didn’t want her to be a poet at all. “She is a “serpents obedient/wife”, the serpent being her husband Samuel Sayles.And she never recovered” (Lucille Clifton - Mary Jane Lupton --- page 14) Mary Lupton tells us that it was her father’s prohibition of poetry, that made young Lucille keep on writing. She hated the way her father treated her mother. “I can forgive my father for driving us crazy. He has driven us crazy, you know. But I cannot forgive him for driving my mother mad. And she was probably always on the edge” (Lucille Clifton - Mary Jane Lupton --- page 14). Thelma became mad and epileptic. Her health went on deteriorating. And after giving birth to Lucille’s younger brother Sam, Thelma said to her daughter “Get away, get away. I have not had a normal life .I want you to have a normal life. I want you to get away” (Lucille Clifton - Mary Jane Lupton --- page 14) Thelma died in 1959. In her memoir, “Generations” and in many of her poems, ancestors speak through the mother, Thelma. In her earliest elegy, “My Mama Moved among the days”, the mother is a dream walker in the fields. “This dream walker floats through Lucille’s dreams and becomes a ghostly reality”. The father, Samuel Sayles was a poor uneducated coal miner. He later moved to Buffalo to work in the steel mills. He was good and bad to his children at the same time. He was the one who encouraged them to read. He used to tell the young children, ghostly stories and entertain them. That represented his good side. “But scary things happened when he went out with friends, came home at two in the morning and went into his daughter’s room pretending to be a ghost, scaring her” (Lucille Clifton - Mary Jane Lupton --- page 13) The father never supported the family. The mother had to bring up the family almost all alone. The resentment to the irresponsible father is very evident in Lucille’s “Forgiving my father”. It is Friday. We have come To the paying of the bills. all week you have stood in my dreams like a ghost asking for more time but today is payday, payday old man; my mother’s hand opens in her early grave and hold it out like a good daughter. Thus starts the poem. The image of her mother begging to him even from her grave sums up the whole relationships described above. The line, “all week you have stood in my dreams like a ghost asking for more time”, hints of the scary nights, when the father entered the daughter’s room as ghost. According to Mary Jane Lupton, Literary critics and textual evidence supports the idea that Samuel Sayles sexually abused Lucille. Lupton quotes Hillary Holladay --“the abuse was clearly a defining component of her youth and has been a continuing source of melancholy”. Some critics read Clifton’s memoir, titled “generations”, as a veiled exploration of the incest taboo. Anyway this background explains why the poet calls her father a lecher and liar. “ never be time enough daddy daddy old lecher/old liar” ( forgiving my father ) And the poet describes the relationship between her father and mother thus : “you were each other’s bad bargain , not mine/ daddy old pauper, old prisoner, old dead man”. Thus the title of the poem is in sharp opposition with the poem itself. There is no forgiveness, but the title claims that it is there. The poem echoes a childhood made harsh by an irresponsible father. But in a way she is forgiving her father as she does come to some form of acceptance of him, over his past abuses towards her and her mother. That way she comes to peace over her painful memories. It is as if the fire fighter comes to the family home after it has been burned down completely. Yet the fire couldn’t be fought out fully. THE SOURCES USED: 1) Poem in Praise of Menstruation -- poems of Lucille Clifton – www. Poemhunter.com 2) Holladay Hillary, on “poem to my uterus” and “to my last period” ---Modern American poetry--- (www. English.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/Clifton/uterus.htm) 3) Dunick Lisa –on “poem to my uterus” and “to my last period” --- Modern American poetry--- ww.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/Clifton/uterus.htm) 4) Clifton Lucille ---On Strength Gotten from Others ---- A mini-biography, www.math.buffallo.edu) 5) Mary Jane Lupton ---- Lucille Clifton --- (Biography) pages 12 to 14 (Green World Publishing Group 2006. Read More