How do you read poetry?
This February, I’d like to help you explore that question through the work of four of my favorite Black poets. First up is Lucille Clifton (1936–2010).
Encountering a Clifton poem on the page, you might first observe the brevity. As the mother of six children, her early poems were written in her head throughout the day as she cooked, cleaned and cared for others. The poems had to be short enough to memorize!
But don’t let the apparent simplicity fool you; anyone who has held a seashell in the palm of her hand knows something small can be intricate. In a few words, Clifton plumbs the profound. For instance, in describing chopping collard greens, she senses “the bond of living things everywhere.” Her phrase “poem this” attests to the mystic encounter of discovering the extraordinary in the ordinary.
The phrase “poem this” also makes a noun into a verb. It breaks the standard rules of English. Clifton’s poems often lack punctuation or capitalization. The deeper meaning is that, writing from her racial and social location, she broke the rules of a language that so often denigrated Black people, particularly Black women: “how dangerous it is to be born with breasts … how dangerous it is to wear dark skin.” Clifton sought new forms and expressions of language to affirm Black life — “listen you a wonder.”
In her poem “slaveships,” Clifton notes that the names of ships in the Transatlantic slave trade were often theological, such as Jesus, Angel and Grace of God. In response, Clifton used her poetic imagination and inhabited the voice of religious figures, like John the Baptist and Mother Mary, to invent new metaphors like “blackness of a star” and “green of jesus” (an image of rebirth in spring).
In turn, Clifton’s poetry frequently invites readers to use their imaginations and consider her experience as a Black woman. Her poem “homage to my hips” is a delightful example! In the poem “won’t you come celebrate with me,” she proudly declares, “i have shaped … a kind of life.”
While innovative with her language, Clifton was a student of tradition and rooted in the wider community. I am indebted to my study with scholar J. Kameron Carter for elucidating Clifton’s use of lower-case “i” throughout her work. In terms of the Afro-Caribbean worldview, the oft-repeated “i” generally meant “we” and was indicative of the belief that the divine connects all of life — “the bond of living things everywhere.”
In an interview, Clifton remarked, “Writing … is a way of remembering I am not alone.” Reading Clifton can provide this reminder for all of us. In perhaps her most famous poem, “blessing the boats,” Clifton encouraged readers, “may the tide … carry you out beyond the face of fear.” Clear-eyed about the historical abuses and present racial injustices, Clifton also evokes words of hope for every month of the year — “today we are possible.”
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church. His newly-published book is a collection of his columns for the Chatham News + Record titled “Hope Matters: Churchless Sermons.”