It would be impossible to analyze in this small space the
many themes Clifton incorporates into Mercy: body, loss, time, color,
memory, self-image, economic status, family, nationality, belonging, etc. Her
poems are brief but the content speaks with enough clarity that Clifton’s world
is conveyed unmistakably.
Clifton speaks of division, of what she perceives to create
difference. In The Phantom she observes a man of different skin color and asks “what
is the color of/ his country/ what is the color/ of mine.” She speaks of
America as multiple countries, divided not by physical space but rather by color,
economics, and all dividing factors that create difference even within a
unified border. But just as her poem Last Words transcends time by identifying
the deceased mother as younger than the daughter, Clifton transcends the
boundaries of normative society to embrace difference while recognizing the evident
limitations of societal standards.
While Clifton recognizes societal division, she rejects this
separation on the grounds that it is logically false. In her poem Tuesday
9/11/01, she writes:
God has blessed America
To learn that no one is exempt
The world is one
all fear
Is one all life all death
All one
Clifton incorporates fear, life and death to demonstrate
that all people share common and inevitable experiences; just as one must die,
fear is equally inescapable. Clifton’s work reads profoundly personal through
the mentions of her mother, her nationality, color and conceptualization of
self. However, she also manages to use these identifying features to suggest
that each person has a relationship with their own self based on similar
factors and thus all people carry common ground. There is nothing more unifying
than basic instinct, the fear of death or merely the fear itself. I admire Clifton's ability to recognize society and its standards in terms of the human instinct and still engage the reader in her own story in a way that is emotionally compelling.
--Casey V
I enjoyed how you talked about Clifton transcend[ing] the boundaries of normative society to embrace difference while recognizing the evident limitations of societal standards"and I like how you talk about fear too. However, I believe the unity in Clifton's work comes from more than fear. Fear is part of it, but the unity, for me, is in the universality of the life cycle. The cycle of life in the poems is transcendent and becomes unity--unity as a point of mercy.
ReplyDeleteRelationship to the self, yes. And one that has an articulation that invites others not to vet part of the life as much as to learn from it--the conceptualization of the self you talk about is simple and full of thorns and flowers.
ReplyDeletee
There's something to be said about a poet who can infuse so much of her own self, her life, her experiences and her body into her words...filling it so much with her own identity, yet still leaving just enough room for us all to find access space. It's quite remarkable. You hit it so perfectly when u said "Clifton’s work reads profoundly personal through the mentions of her mother, her nationality, color and conceptualization of self. However, she also manages to use these identifying features to suggest that each person has a relationship with their own self based on similar factors and thus all people carry common ground." It's so true. This is exactly what she does and it feels super intentional.
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