An Annotated Bibliography of Secondary Sources about
Lucille Clifton's Poetry

By the students in English 260: Approaches to Literary Studies

Marygrove College, Winter 2000

 

Hull, Akasha (Gloria). "Channeling the Ancestral Muse: Lucille Clifton and Delores Kendrick." Feminist Measures: Soundings in Poetry and Theory. Eds. Lynne Keller and Christanne Miller. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1994. 96-116.

This essay opens with two short anecdotes that reveal how the two authors developed their distinctive writing styles. Clifton's initiation into the spiritual world began with the use of an old Ouija board, which spelled out the name of her deceased mother . After subsequent encounters, Clifton began to consciously acknowledge the spiritual realm. This would manifest itself in her next volume of poems entitled Two Headed Woman. The second anecdote describes Delores Kendrick's first encounter with the "other" realm . One night Kendrick was having trouble sleeping , so she read slave narratives. When she awoke the next morning, she had "an insistent urge to write a poem" based on one of the narratives she had read the night before. This began a process by which she would sit down with a stack of narratives, and let the voices come to her. The poems that flowed from this would make up her volume entitled Women of Plums: Poems in the Voices of Slave Women. Hull reveals that the two authors have spiritual themes present in their work, but the methodology is different for each: "Clifton--unlike Kendrick--does not seem to have channeled specific works and language, but--like he--she analytically isolates distinct strands and modes of her creative process" (144). --Christian Stevenson and Robert Armstrong

 

Jong, Erica "Three Sisters" Parnassus: Poetry in Review, 1.1 (1972): 77-88.

Jong analyzes the poetry of Eleanor Ross Taylor, Eve Merriam, and Lucille Clifton. She evaluates how effectively each writer portrays the soul of a woman, and how each writer illustrates her ideas through her work. The three works are Taylor’s Welcome Euminides, Merriam’s The Double Bed, and Clifton’s Good News about the Earth. Jong contrasts the works of these poets with the works of male authors in terms of the hindered abilities that male authors face in writing about female issues, issues such as how the African-American woman lives and breathes in a world scarred with chauvinism and racial intolerance. This article challenges Taylor, Merriam and Clifton to speak more clearly to the important issues at hand in society. In the section on Clifton, Jong touches on her poetic technique: "Everyone talks about breath units and breath pauses, but the truth is that few poets know how to achieve them. This poet knows." Jong believes that Clifton has a gift for writing the subtle truth. Jong challenges Clifton to write about the tragedy of the African-American experience "in all its horror." Jong believes that Clifton is well suited for the task and that Clifton has the power and talent to write such poetry and short stories. Overall Jong appreciates Clifton’s work but feels that it is sometimes a little simplistic for Clifton’s abilities. Jong feels that Clifton is a poet who could really touch very important issues and Jong challenges her to do so.--Elizabeth Brown and Brian Silk

 

Madhubuti, Haki. "Lucille Clifton: Warm Water, Greased Legs, and Dangerous Poetry." Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation. Ed. Mari Evans. Garden City: Doubleday, 1984. 150-160.

An obvious admirer of Clifton’s work, Madhubuti gives a well rounded account of Clifton’s talent, style, strength, and person. He refers to her poetry as "often a conscious, quiet introduction to the real world of Black sensitivities" (151). Madhubuti leaves no doubt that Clifton is a gifted poet who is able to use simple language to communicate her ideas and concepts, yet she "makes her readers work and think" (151). He demonstrates that relationships and family are at the heart of her proud poetry. For example, he chooses a selection entitled "sisters" from An Ordinary Woman which begins,

me and you be sisters

we be the same

me and you

coming from the same place....

Her caring heart breaks in a poem about youth and failed dreams. The last lines are, "we have some fine black boys/don’t it make you want to cry?" Other examples of her work are used throughout the article, giving the reader a taste of the work of this thoughtful, loving, proud, honest, and bold woman.--Margaret Burbo

Madhubuti expresses his admiration and respect for Lucille Clifton in musical terms, describing her as a "singer of faultless ease and able storytelling" (150) whose "poetry is emotion-packed and musically fluent" (151). Madhubuti points out Clifton’s ability to keep Black families together in her poetry. Instead of criticizing Black men, she offers them respect. He says, "Her treatment of Black men is unusually significant and sensitive" (152). Clifton also provides a strong image of "Dahomey-made" Black women (152). Madhubuti acknowledges Clifton’s poems as material that is full of hope. He says, "the poems cry out direction, hope, and future" (153). He discusses the simple language that Clifton uses. She tries to incorporate small and few words into her poems so her readers won’t be limited. He explains, "Most of her poems are short and tight, as is her language" (154). Madhubuti applauds Clifton’s use of simple language as a tool to gain Black interest. He also describes her connection with nature. He says, "She is the original root woman, a connector to trees, earth, and the undestroyables…" (158). Madhubuti references many of Clifton’s poems, such as "in the inner city" in Good Times (1969), and "Turning" from An Ordinary Woman (1974). Madhubuti challenges "the people" to explore Lucille Clifton’s, "Warm Water, Greased Legs, and Dangerous Poetry."--Elizabeth Faulkner-Scott

 

McCluskey, Audrey T. "Tell the Good News: A View of the Works of
Lucille Clifton." Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation.
Ed. Mari Evans. Garden City, NY: Anchor-Doubleday, 1984. 139-149.

McCluskey’s easy-to-read critique of Lucille Clifton’s work conveys a favorable image of the writer and her work. A biographical sketch refers to Clifton's personal views. In interviews Clifton has expressed the beliefs which illuminate her reasons for writing. McCluskey devotes two pages to Clifton’s work for children, giving excerpts from her "Everett Anderson" series: Good, Says Jerome and The Black BCs. McCluskey gives ample attention to Clifton’s works intended for adult audiences. These include Clifton’s Generations, An Ordinary Woman, Good Times, and Good News About the Earth. McCluskey compares Clifton’s writing styles and use of language to that of other poets such as Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman and Gwendolyn Brooks. In Generations, Clifton uses Whitman as a literary model to suggest celebration and self-discovery which "is an attempt at reconciliation and synthesis of family, history, and the artist" (147). In Good Times Clifton shows of blues songs, "they know that the world is not a sane and rational place but is the only world we have. We must learn to manipulate the chaos--not to control it--to ensure individual and collective survival" (145). The reader must expect to find that "Clifton’s feminine sensibility, like her Blackness, runs deep" (143). McCluskey observes that Clifton’s poetry is deeply rooted in her spirituality and assured self-image: "Clifton’s view of herself as a writer is based, in part, upon her belief that ‘things don’t fall. Things hold. Lines connect in ways that last and last and lives become generations made out of pictures and words just kept'" (142). McCluskey show the importance Clifton places on the lessons people learn from the experiences of past generations, particularly what Clifton has learned from her own family.--E. Bomar III, Cynthia Cox, Janice Ridley, Amy Sasnowski

 

Muske, Carol. "Ourselves as History." Parnassus: Poetry in Review. 4.2 (1976): 111-121.

Muske examines the works of Lucille Clifton, Jon Anderson, and Charles Wright. She discusses the use of metaphors and symbolism by the authors as they recollect history. She describes Clifton’s An Ordinary Woman as an attempt to use plain and simple words to recapture history and recall memories. Muske examines two of Clifton’s poems, "In Salem" and "At last we killed the Roaches," both of which she describes as attempts to breathe new life into everyday occurrences with intensity and determination. However, Muske criticizes Clifton’s use of "mnemonic reality" to remind of us something. Muske believes that in doing so, Clifton fails to bring to life the true meanings of her words. Muske goes on to say that the use of simple and "ordinary" words sometimes just leaves the reader hanging as if something is missing . Muske compares this with Clifton’s next work , Generations A Memoir, which consists of storytelling based upon her family history. Poems in this collection are backed by testimonials handed down from generation to generation, and this is what Muske believes gives them a sense of strength and "loyalty." Muske concludes by discussing the use of language and recollection of history in her analysis of Jon Anderson’s In Sepia and Charles Wright’s Bloodlines. --Gwendolyn Denham

Muske focuses on the different literary devices Jon Anderson, Charles Wright, and Lucille Clifton employ to stimulate the memory to recall history. Whereas Jon Anderson writes from the memory's origin of darkness and makes it blazingly conscious, Charles Wright's method is to have a "head-on confrontation with language" on the path to enlightenment. Lucille Clifton uses the power of everyday objects to relive memories. Muske feels that Clifton's third collection of poems, An Ordinary Woman, "is perhaps not ordinary enough." She refers to the self-consciously "black" poems as having "too much bad romance and swagger," and this "stands in the way of our perception" (113). Clifton's next work, Generations: A Memoir, "a tribute to a state of mind that survives," according to Muske, contains strength in tone, fierce loyalty (113-114). Clifton's "language has flex and determination," and, Muske asserts, Clifton is an"intensifier." Yet, Muske criticizes the "attempt at creating black magic" and the occasional stage voice in An Ordinary Woman. Anderson's In Sepia, and Wright's Bloodlines appear to please Muske on a literary level more than do some of the poems of Lucille Clifton.--Sherrell Peyton

 

Ostriker, Alicia. "Kin and Kin: The Poetry of Lucille Clifton." American Poetry Review 22.6 (1993): 41-48. Rpt. in Literary Influence and African-American Writers. Ed. Tracy Mishkin. New York: Garland, 1996.

This article focuses upon the extraordinarily simple yet complex nature of Clifton’s poetry. The works examined here, such as in "some jesus," "in blackness like a star," are highly spiritual in content and therefore mystical, subtle, radiant, and religiously forceful. Ostriker notes that Clifton’s use of "white space" does not by any means minimize her highly charged sense of urgency as she ingeniously provokes the reader into deep thought about spiritual matters that must be clearly lived through natural experience. Ostriker argues, "What these poems tell us is that high and low things can meet, along with the union of the holy and the comic, if one knows enough about both." In a brief yet thorough biographical section, Ostriker delineates a number of key experiences that have made Clifton a militant, illuminating visionary who is strongly imaginative and "defines herself without raising her voice." As a poet herself, Ostriker identifies with and draws support from Clifton, yet makes clear that their racial difference lets her go only so far into the poet’s mind. In matters of race, Ostriker does note Clifton’s integrity and originality of thought as she avoids overused "militant rhetoric," while maintaining the fiery bitterness that must characterize poetry on this subject.--Roland Gilmer, Clois Foster, and Nancy White

 

Waniek, Marilyn Nelson. "Black Silence, Black Songs." Callaloo 6 (1983): 15165.

This article reviews the works of five writers: Bob Kaufmann, Dudley Randall, Sherley Anne Williams, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Lucille Clifton.   Waniek studies four poems in Two Headed Woman showing how Clifton takes personal experiences and relates them to her poetry. Waniek explains that "Clifton asserts her belief in personalism by affirming herself and her family and by exposing her exterior and interior lives to the piercing light of her poems." Clifton displays her personalism in poems such as "homage to mine" and "Lucy and Her Girls." Waniek describes Clifton's poetry as "direct, filled with conviction, and touched to its heart by human sympathy." However, she explains, sometimes Clifton's "brevity" takes away from substance. She sums up Clifton as a wonderful poet whose poetry is thought-provoking.--Christie Logan

Waniek takes four of Clifton’s poems from the collection, Two Headed Woman, and employs biographical information to show how Clifton has used personal experience "to reach backward . . . into her family and racial history and forward into the unknown." She uses the poem "Lucy and Her Girls" to show Clifton’s "connectedness" between generations. Waniek cites "homage to my hips," "what the mirror said," and other poems as reflective of Clifton’s "delicate and clear" voice. Waniek also looks at the strong and weak points of Clifton’s poetry describing some of the brief poems as "thin" but the best as "so compressed that they are weighty and thought-provoking."--Barbara Jean Guilford

 

White, Mark Bernard. "Sharing the Living Light: Rhetorical, Poetic, and Social Identity in Lucille Clifton." College Language Association Journal 40 (1997): 288-304.

White focuses on how Lucille Clifton uses her poetry to teach and consciously raise awareness of African-American history. White’s emphasis in this article is on exploring Clifton’s usage of the word light and how it functions differently in several works. At times it may represent a spiritual being, whereas at other times, White says, it is " a complex combination of knowledge, self knowledge, and compelling truth" ( 291). White cites the uses of hyperbaton ( using a word ahead of its normal place) and synecdoche (using a part of something to signify the whole) found throughout Clifton’s poetry. He also notes how Clifton addresses the "conflicting perspective of cultural self-identity among African-Americans" (299).--Maria A. Archie, Cindy Lamar, and Ramone Thompson