Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsMaking the Most of Every Word
Reviewed in the United States on July 6, 2016
I’d seen Lucille Clifton read a few poems on TV and You Tube, but I hadn’t yet read any of her books. I knew “Homage to My Hips,” so I expected some sassy feminism. She did give me sass, wit, feminism, and so much more. I was expecting her to remind me of Maya Angelou, but I found her a bit more like Langston Hughes, who helped promote her work when she was a young writer. I often think “wow,” when I read a favorite author, but, in Clifton’s case, I was saying, “Wow!” aloud.
She writes with the economy of words I most admire in poetry. Even with musical repetition in just the right spots, her poems rarely go beyond 20 lines. Her poems even look simple: short lines, often in lower case with no punctuation. That’s where simplicity stops. By the end of a poem, she’s either waved a magic wand over you or struck you with a sledge hammer. I am in awe.
Her genius often comes down to one word, the right word, the one you likely would not have chosen. Often those single perfect words were the ones that stopped me, made me read the line again, and mark it in pencil. Here are a couple that had that effect:
In “what i think when i ride the train” (about her father who worked for the railroad):
“he made the best damn couplers
in the whole white world.”
“White” is the perfect near-rhyme to replace the expected “wide.” It lets us read between the lines (without having to rant) that her daddy worked hard, saved lives, and didn’t get the recognition and pay he deserved.
In “Lazarus (second day),”
“i am not the same man
borne into the crypt.”
“Borne” reminds us that death and birth are opposites and also hints at what we know is coming: Lazarus will be born again. Clifton’s fresh looks at Bible stories were among my favorites. She wrote multiple poems about Lazarus, Adam and Eve, and Lucifer.
Other major themes are the sad state of the world, violence, racism, family, womanhood, aging, and cancer. Amid so much bleakness, her wicked humor brings relief. The funniest to me, is “wishes for sons.” She begins
“i wish them cramps.
i wish them a strange town
and the last tampon.
i wish them no 7-11.”
She continues to wish them hot flashes, cramps, and similar afflictions, and ends
“let them think they have accepted
arrogance in the universe,
then bring them to gynecologists
not unlike themselves.”
