Oh, Lucille

As I'm fighting a fever and nursing a sore throat I'm also trying to squeeze myself in between the lines of Lucille Clifton's poetry. I'm going to keep this post short and sweet mainly because I feel like crap and want nothing but to be drugged and sleep, but also because there's only one thing I feel lead to focus on and that is Clifton's careful handling of women.

As the poetry of Langston Hughes is to the role of black culture as a whole, Lucille Clifton’s work is to celebrating and analyzing black women specifically. Many of her poems are woman-centric and give powerful insight on varying facets of womanhood. Often, literature/poetry about the female body is hypersexual and focuses primarily on the physical aspect. The sexual gaze onto a woman’s body is often depicted and her beauty dissected. OR, woman is often shown in a consistent state of self-loathing and self-deprecation. Clifton’s poetry deviates from this stereotypical path by isolating specific facets of womanhood and carving stories from them, often in honor and awe of the power woman wields not only bodily but spiritually. Many of her pieces are about the maternal bond and she gives us such a zoomed in lens on the healing process that has to take place after the loss of one's mother. 

One poem that resonates in me is on page 53

your mother send you this

you have a teapot

others have teapots

if you abuse them

they will break

you have a gift 

others have gifts

if you abuse them

you understand

she advises you

you are special to her

she advises you

we are not she

Clifton makes this remarkable craft choice to speak to herself through a multi-person narrator (the ones) who are the conduits of messages from her mother who has passed. These poems are so deep, I cried at a few lines. It very well could be that I have too much theraflu in my system or that some of these gems sound so familiar and authentic in their mother tone. 

Ok, that's all I got tonight. Forgive me. I hope to be well enough for class.