Eleanor+Pope

=**Lucille Clifton**= http://www.jmu.edu/furiousflower/wm_library/04_Lucille_Clifton_(5).jpg



these hips are big hips. they need space to move around in. they don't fit into little petty places. these hips are free hips. they don't like to be held back. these hips have never been enslaved, they go where they want to go they do what they want to do. these hips are mighty hips. these hips are magic hips. i have known them to put a spell on a man and spin him like a top ....................................................... || **<range type="comment" id="632121">Analytical Summary** Through freely swaying phrases Lucille Clifton taps into the feminine influence that inspires any woman. <range type="comment" id="32603">The brazenness with which she bares her body exudes contagious confidence and the temptation to groove. Each line in her homage comprises only a handful of important words. Just as her hips “need space to move around in,” her declarations need space to make their point without superfluity. Clearly Clifton seeks to boast about her “mighty” and “magic hips,” as her <range type="comment" id="289738">uncluttered writing does not try to disguise her pride. The succinctness of her poem contributes to her resolution as a “free” woman who does not second-guess her ability or shy away from what makes her a woman. “Homage to my Hips” also concerns itself with female rights by refusing to surrender to censored expression. Clifton argues that women do not deserve menial roles in life for “they don’t fit into little petty places.” Referencing her heritage as an African American, the poet continues to communicate her fought-for freedom and the hips that “have never been enslaved” either by society or man. In fact, she rightfully places herself above man, insisting that she can “spin him like a top,” instead of the other way around. Empowering sensuality erupts from this poem, proving to any woman that her hips are worthy of some respect.
 * ** Homage to my Hips* **

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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">curling them around <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">i hold their bodies in obscene embrace <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">thinking of everything but kinship. <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">collards and kale <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">strain against each strange other <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">away from my kissmaking hand and <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">the iron bedpot. <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">the pot is black. <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">the cutting board is black, <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">my hand, <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">and just for a minute <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">the greens roll black under the knife, <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">and the kitchen twists dark on its spine <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">and i taste in my natural appetite <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">the bond live things everywhere. <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">......................................................... || **Analytical Summary** Personification and dark visualization of two similar vegetables conveys the seemingly absurd struggle between people of different races in Lucille Clifton’s “Cutting Greens.” The opening stanza tells the story of “collards and kale,” separate “bodies” that apparently do not belong together “in obscene embrace.” Their “strain” can be palpably felt in the palm of the reader, like two magnets of the same charge repelling each other by force, because of its familiarity. This impossible attraction elicits Clifton’s “thinking of everything but kinship” and the thought that these greens behave much like human beings. The next stanza introduces a color and the first distinction of why the resistance exists. Clifton felt the strain of the greens while sensing a tangible repulsion of “black.” Interestingly, she describes items that aid in transformation: a “pot” that can boil off bigotry into steam, a “cutting board” that can chop discrimination to pieces, and her “hand” that Clifton does not outwardly distinguish as black. For once collards and kale live together as one, bonded by a poet who sees that they are both vegetables. How unfortunate that this realization generally occurs only “for a minute.” ||
 * ** Cutting Greens* **

<span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">and the gulf enters the sea and so forth, <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">none of them emptying anything, <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">all of them carrying yesterday <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">forever on their white tipped backs, <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">all of them dragging forward tomorrow. <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">it is the great circulation <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">of the earth's body, like the blood <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">of the gods, this river in which the past <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">is always flowing. every water <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">is the same water coming round. <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">everyday someone is standing on the edge <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">of this river, staring into time, <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">whispering mistakenly: <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">only here. only now. <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">.................................................................. || **<range type="comment" id="215423">Analytical Summary** Observing the circularity of time and its presence on our round planet, Lucille Clifton investigates repetition and the meaninglessness of advancement in her poem. She disregards the idea of a past, present, and future, realizing that each flows into the other. “The Mississippi Enters Into the Gulf” opens with an initial comparison of time and water, imagining that, like the contents of “the Mississippi,” the days of the year swim with the other days and eventually return. Clifton observes the absence of cargo on these seas, implying the absence of milestones in life. If these events inevitably replay, “all of them carrying yesterday forever,” the significance of history dissolves with each rotation. The integration of the verb, “dragging,” correlates to the viscous mud of the Mississippi. Both the river and time run with eternal resistance. Clifton introduces an interesting parallel by comparing “the great circulation” to “the blood of the gods.” Because the gods possess supernatural power, “this river in which the past is always flowing” spills over the natural succession of time. She concludes by criticizing pre-Columbus discovery folk, those who believed the world was flat and stand “on the edge of this river” gaping at all the uncharted time before them. In reality, there is no time to live in the moment, “only here. only now,” because the moments are all around us.
 * ** The Mississippi River Enters Into the Gulf* **

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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">if there is a river <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">more beautiful than this <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">bright as the blood <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">red edge of the moon if <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">there is a river <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">more faithful than this <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">returning each month <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">to the same delta if there <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">is a river <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">braver than this <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">coming and coming in a surge <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">of passion, of pain if there is <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">a river <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">more ancient than this <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">daughter of eve <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">mother of cain and of abel if there is in <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">the universe such a river if <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">there is some where water <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">more powerful than this wild <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">water <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">pray that it flows also <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">through animals <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">beautiful and faithful and ancient <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">and female and brave <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">....................................................... || **<range type="comment" id="351536">Analytical Summary ** Unlike the typical complaints of any creature with a uterus, “Poem in Praise of Menstruation” takes a refreshing glance at the often-overlooked miracles of the menstrual cycle. Lucille Clifton possibly wrote this one week of the month when the only way to beat them was to join them, as she dredges up vocabulary rarely deemed worthy to describe such an unrelenting nuisance. Clifton begins by addressing her subject as “a river,” already invoking images of swells and currents and streams. She writes entirely in the conditional, suggesting that no tide exists more “beautiful than this” in the natural known world, including “the moon.” No longer does blood represent injury, but rather the glorious reflections at sunset, reliable at the beginning and end, and “bright” and strong in their crimson color. There are very few things to depend on in life, so why grumble at the one thing that loyally returns “each month to the same delta?” No, it is not true that every girl asks for an automatic best friend, but Clifton turns the dog upside down herself and notices the faithfulness in the one thing that no girl wants to be faithful (most of the time). Her testament continues to acknowledge the bravery of “a surge” that fights through “pain” for “passion,” the “ancient” existence of a river that spouted with the birth of the first “daughter,” and the power of “this wild water” that refuses to be tamed. Clifton even considers it a blessing, worthy enough to flow “through animals beautiful and faithful and ancient and female and brave.” For we are, above all, women. ||
 * ** Poem in Praise of Menstruation **

// for mama // remember this. she is standing by the furnace. the coals glisten like rubies. her hand is crying. her hand is clutching a sheaf of papers. poems. she gives them up. they burn jewels into jewels. her eyes are animals. each hank of her hair is a serpent's obedient wife. she will never recover. remember. there is nothing you will not bear for this woman's sake. ....................................... || **Analytical Summary** Replete with metaphor and simile, Lucille Clifton’s dedication to her mama in “Fury” sears like a branded memory. Presumably, this poem was written as Clifton dealt with the ensuing anger of her mother’s passing. She opens with two words, “remember this,” serving as both instruction for the reader to take something with them and encouragement for herself to grieve without forgetting. The comparison of burning embers to “rubies” that “glisten” establishes a reassuringly royal tone through which Clifton can believe that her mother will find prosperity again. The following lines descend in a reverse pattern that reveals first the tears of a daughter and then the poems that she writes to express them. <range type="comment" id="596663">Once again Clifton references a noble tone as her poems “burn jewels into jewels,” magnificent expressions of fury, which remain unchanged in the fire of death. Returning to visual memories of her mother, Clifton recalls “eyes” that, like “animals,” see and sense independently. Perhaps her mother saw the world as an outlet to achieve individualism, despite her “obedient” hair. She was restrained by a child, who graciously acknowledges through poetry “there is nothing [she] will not bear for this woman’s sake.” ||
 * **Fury**

<span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">boys <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">i don't promise you nothing <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">but this <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">what you pawn <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">i will redeem <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">what you steal <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">i will conceal <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">my private silence to <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">your public guilt <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">is all i got <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">girls <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">first time a white man <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">opens his fly <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">like a good thing <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">we'll just laugh <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">laugh real loud my <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">black women <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">children <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">when they ask you <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">why is your mama so funny <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">say <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">she is a poet <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">she don't have no sense <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">........................................ || **<range type="comment" id="686118">Analytical Summary ** Making promises to directed readers, Lucille Clifton conveys her zero-bullshit convictions of rape and how to stand up against it in this poem. “Abominations” reaches out to men, women, and children because everyone should be aware and know the story from all sides. Deliberately, she calls them “boys” and “girls,” pointing out the vulnerable age when such an outrage can take place. Clifton begins by addressing the “boys,” proving to them with cause and effect that whatever they do, she will overcome. In the double negative, she says, “I don’t promise you nothing,” a roundabout way to make a promise but still seem like she decisively promises “nothing.” The following lines discuss her intentions to “redeem” what is promised to her, “conceal” what is taken from her, and remain modestly taciturn next their “public guilt.” Clifton sets an example for any circumstance of abuse, demonstrating with sure convictions that a way to win exists. Her matter of fact tone leaves no emotion to dwell on and no reason to celebrate an abominable topic. Conversely, she preaches support to the “girls” in the second stanza, laughing at the “white man” together as if it is just some ludicrous joke. The repetition of “laugh real loud” shows how much laughter it may take to see this “like a good thing.” So laugh real loud. Protecting her “black women,” Clifton reveals her experienced interior and the desire to prevent it from plaguing in the people she loves. There is no need to broadcast “Abominations,” which Clifton conveys in her last stanza to the “children” who do not need to know “why.” She includes them in this poem to include them in the lesson, but should they ask, “Why is your mama so funny,” simply “say she is a poet she don’t have no sense.” However, Lucille Clifton does seem sensible in a situation monstrous to make sense of. ||
 * **Abominations**

whatever slid into my mother's room that late june night, tapping her great belly, summoned me out roundheaded and unsmiling. is this the moon, my father used to grin. cradling me? it was the moon but nobody knew it then. the moon understands dark places. the moon has secrets of her own. she holds what light she can. we girls were ten years old and giggling in our hand-me-downs. we wanted breasts, pretended that we had them, tissued our undershirts. jay johnson is teaching me to french kiss, ella bragged, who is teaching you? how do you say; my father? the moon is queen of everything. she rules the oceans, rivers, rain. when I am asked whose tears these are I always blame the moon. ..................................................................... || **<range type="comment" id="696832">Analytical Summary ** With simple anecdotes of growing up, Lucille Clifton delivers a story of her own birth and the effects of being born with the moon. As a child, she sought an explanation for the darkness maturing around her and looked up to her lunar twin for the answer. Clifton juxtaposes two certainties of corruption and innocence in “Moonchild.” Although most children, especially babies, blossom in fearless ignorance, Clifton emerged “roundheaded” as if her mind had already been shaped by the world, and “unsmiling” as if she already knew how to wear a frown. She feminizes the moon in the second stanza with a label of “her,” insinuating they are one in the same, and reveals her premature understanding of “dark places” and the “secrets” that are kept there. Creating the illusion of a mysterious astronomical body, Clifton appears as a porous satellite herself, trapping “what light she can” in the hopeful abyss of her planet. Then she abruptly introduces a carefree ten-year old girl, “giggling in…hand-me-downs,” pretending to have “breasts,” and gossiping about French kissing. This implies the silly pretense Clifton shadowed her unexplained reality with, but also how fine the barrier between them was. Together with a bitterly jaded tone and submission to the truth, Clifton summarizes, “the moon is queen of everything.” Because it “rules the oceans, rivers, and rain,” it must rule the injustice that accompanies becoming an adult. So to the “tears” of youth and age, Clifton “always blame[s] the moon,” a convenient scapegoat far enough away to summon a poet into its “cradling” arms. ||
 * **Moonchild**

There is a girl inside. She is randy as a wolf. She will not walk away and leave these bones to an old woman. She is a green tree in a forest of kindling. She is a greeen girl in a used poet. She has waited patient as a nun for the second coming, when she can break through gray hairs into blossom and her lovers will harvest honey and thyme and the woods will be wild with the damn wonder of it. .................................................................. || **Analytical Summary** Between its empowering assertions and natural imagery, Lucille Clifton’s “There is a Girl Inside” cultivates the persevering strength and youth of the poet herself. Originally published in //Good Woman// in 1987, this poem was written in the later years of Clifton’s life. Her deceptively simple language portrays the innocent girl reverting from the veteran woman she was. Writing from the third person perspective, Clifton shares the aspirations of a girl trapped “inside” whom she can no longer refer to as I. Yet she is confident in this girl. Employing future tense, Clifton trusts that “she will not walk away,” but rather carry her through on solid “bones.” Each phrase asserts itself, characterized by to be verbs and a girl who does not hesitate to be whom she “is.” “The second coming” marks Clifton’s faith in the return of her past and a chance to recapture the accompanying vigor. In this certainty, she gains greater strength to “break through the gray hairs” of her present age. Clifton developed an awareness of the environment during her career, which she planted in the metaphors within this poem. Beginning in the second line, she augments her comparison to a “wolf” by baring sexual desire within an already ferocious creature. Hope reappears as a “green tree” enduring the arid expanses of both a “forest of kindling” and a “used poet’s” mind. Lastly, Clifton anticipates the “harvest” of “honey” that will smother her jaded age in sweetness and “thyme” that may be the ingredient necessary to make time grow. Through this combination of ecological forces, Clifton once again seeks to unearth the girl inside. In her final two stanzas, Clifton concludes her poem without punctuation that would only hold her back. Indeed, “she has waited patient as a nun,” but the unstoppable emergence of the girl inside cannot compete with the resolve of God’s dedicated sisters. Without pause, Clifton dashes towards “the woods” so that everyone, including her panting reader, can “be wild with the damn wonder of it.” And surely, a damn wonder it is. ||
 * **There is a Girl Inside**

<span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">it lay in my palm soft and trembled <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">as a new bird and i thought about <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">authority and how it always insisted <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">on itself, how it was master <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">of the man, how it measured him, never <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">was ignored or denied, and how it promised <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">there would be sweetness if it was obeyed <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">just like the saints do, like the angels <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">and i opened the window and held out my <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">uncupped hand; i swear to god <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">i thought it could fly <span style="color: #262626; font-family: ArialMT,sans-serif;">............................................................... || **<range type="comment" id="548056"><range type="comment" id="426285">Analytical Summary ** Lucille Clifton looks at the mechanics of power in this beautifully innocent poem with sighing remarks and breathing comparisons. She paints a visual picture of “a new bird,” delicate as a watercolor yet defenseless against the winds of “authority.” The most perplexing observation in this poem remains the fact that Clifton holds a bird and thinks of authority, two seemingly opposite subjects. First of all, she refers to them both as “it,” never identifying them by gender to suggest inequality or clearly distinguishing between each subject to suggest a contrast. Fighting against the insistence of “authority,” the poet describes “how it was master…measured him…never was ignored or denied,” almost as if she was targeted herself, but still checks the descriptors off a laundry list separated by commas. It is her defense mechanism. Clifton seeks “sweetness” through her poetry, especially in the verses here. A prevalent theme embedded in “Lorena” is one of flight. The process of coasting through air signifies uninhibited freedom, open space to escape and grow and try. Clifton mentions “angels,” another pastel image of hope, reminding the opaque darkness of despair that some wings can fly beyond the oppressive clutches of domination. “Swear[ing] to god,” she incorporates a religious aspect as well, emphasizing the faith she needs to fly as a free woman. ||
 * **Lorena**

may the tide that is entering even now the lip of our understanding carry you out beyond the face of fear may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back may you open your eyes to water water waving forever and may you in your innocence sail through this to that .................................................... || **<range type="comment" id="824713">Analytical Summary ** Without punctuation to drag the sails, Lucille Clifton sets out on a voyage to new places in “Blessing the Boats.” Her interpretive poem applies to the swirling “fear” and excitement of anyone’s adventure. Clifton’s poetry is known for its unconventional grammar, spacing, and indentation, creating the illusion of a story to be freely told aloud. Visually, the lack of sentence structure contributes the flow of each line, “the tide” and the “water waving forever” as she speaks “carry you” through the story. Not including any pause gives the reader the opportunity to reflect or predict in time, and also <range type="comment" id="194978">to indicate that the journey never ends. Even when “this” is achieved, there is always “that” to conquer next. Clifton gives her blessing both to weathered seamen and beginners who do not yet have their sea legs. Even those who have been on the water for years are only presently at “the lip of our understanding,” waiting to take off again. By kissing the wind and then turning from it with certainty, she invokes faith and belief in a guiding “love” that cannot be watched. The most inspirational line, “may you open your eyes to water,” conveys such a tender awareness of the unknown and encouragement pushing towards the unfamiliar. Though “Blessing the Boats” is often read at the graduations of weary college students, Clifton notices their “innocence.” She appreciates that innocence can wave “forever,” with a reassuring nod that anyone can recapture their purity. I only wish that I had read this poem before setting sail on the poetry project and not at the end, so to have found my tide a little earlier. ||
 * **Blessing the Boats (at St. Mary's)**

Works Cited

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16489

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/lucille-clifton

http://www.poemhunter.com/lucille-clifton/poems/