n the summer of 1999, I went to China with Lucille Clifton; well, not with the poet herself, but with three of her poems. Recently, I came across the one I went on to discuss with students at Sichuan Normal University: "why some people be mad at me," from Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000 (BOA Editions Ltd., 2000), poems selected from five of the ten volumes of poetry published by Clifton so far.

A widely read and as widely enjoyed poet, as well as a prolific author of children's books, Clifton, born in 1936, has received innumerable awards, and has the unique honor of having two books of poems nominated in the same year as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. She is currently a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary's College in Maryland, and on the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets.

In view of her widespread popularity, it is not surprising that when I was invited to give lectures on contemporary American poetry to classes in American Literature at Sichuan Normal University in Chengdu Province, I brought some Clifton poems along. That summer afternoon the auditorium and the broad sills of the low windows separating the hallway from the auditorium were overflowing with at least 300 students.

Since it is best to pack a light suitcase , I packed three of Clifton's short poems, selecting for discussion Clifton's "why some people be mad at me sometimes," a five-line in-your-face poem which basically states that the speaker will remember her own memories, not "their" memories:

they ask me to remember
but they want me to remember
their memories
and i keep on remembering
mine

At first glance, this little poem is certainly not difficult to understand, but the poet gives it a twist by using in the title the subjunctive form characteristic of black colloquial speech, a sort of hand-on-hip gesture (not commonly found in her work) that invites us to consider the poem's political content, as well as aesthetic dimensions. Understood this way, the poem can be seen as a brash confrontation with the nation's collective (white) sensibility. At any rate, the poem started a discussion of racism in America, and the importance of Black Studies. Characteristically Clifton, this poem, seemingly simple, dips below the surface in an unexpected way.

Some of the most powerful poems in Blessing the Boats are in the New Poems section that begin the book. We are reminded of the incident in Jasper, Texas, where a black man was dragged to death roped to a car bumper. The poem "jasper texas 1998" is spoken by the head of the corpse "chosen to speak by the members" of the body, and the question it asks is "why and why and why/ should i call a white man brother?" Even though the townspeople will walk together singing "we shall overcome/... hope bleeds slowly from my mouth/ into the dirt that covers us all./i am done with this dust. i am done." Hope, in the face of yet another black man's torture and death, often seems frivolous.

Death comes in many forms. In "alabama 9/15/63," the poet in three short stanzas recounts the Birmingham church explosion and the death of the four schoolgirls whom the poet refers to as "skylarks" and tells us how their beautiful music cannot be heard because "the blast/ is still too bright to hear them play." These two poems are good examples of the potential power of lyric poetry to deal with charged social and political issues.

Just as Clifton's poems about violence gain their power from a scrutiny of individual events, so too her view of human behavior is up close and personal. In "signs," bird omens indicating that the times are out of joint provide the setting for the erratic behavior of a man who runs barefoot into traffic, flailing his arms wildly about, as if he wanted to fly, and the poet asks, "...what does it mean... ." Irrational behavior marks "praise song," too, where the poet recalls her aunt hurtling herself into the street in front of on-coming traffic, the traffic stopping, and the aunt picking herself up and returning to her relatives, who greet her understanding "little or nothing of what it meant, " but without judgment,/accepting it all like children might,/ like God." Irrationality and danger mark our times but so also does our caring puzzlement in the face of it.

A different approach to the theme of irrationality and danger in the outside world is found in the delicate seven-line poem "photograph: my grandsons/spinning in their joy" about her grandsons (Clifton and her husband had, I believe, six children, and also the pleasure of grandchildren) :

universe
keep them turning turning
black blurs against the window
of the world
for they are beautiful
and there is trouble coming
round and round and round

This secular prayer, addressed to the universe, requests the universe to protect Clifton's grandchildren ("keep them turning turning"), for the poet sees their beauty and playfulness and goodness threatened through the "window/of the world". Here the innocent and playful swirling of the children is contrasted with the constantly turning and returning of "trouble" or evil in the world, though at this moment the two worlds are still separate.

A possible antidote to the "trouble" lurking in the world is found in "study the masters," where Aunt Timmie, dreaming words in Cherokee and Masai, words "huge and particular as hope," becomes the model for the qualities of exactitude, discipline, dedication, order, aesthetic grace, and what it means to be American. Aunt Timmie is the master to be studied and emulated. This poem is interesting from many points of view, but one surely is how far we have come since the post World War II period in revising the concept of "universal" as white and male.

Biblical characters, comic book heroes, and characters from mythology and fairy tales people Clifton's poems, too. For example, in one of my favorites, "report from the angel of eden," the angel watches Adam and Eve have sex, watches as their "dancing" rubs off their wings and dims the brightness of their halos, as they lose their immortality and gain their bodies.

And those mortal bodies are subject to joys, annoyances, and failure. The poem "in praise of menstruation," which praises the beauty, constancy, power, and ancient origins of the menstrual cycle, is balanced by a lighthearted poem "to my last period" in which menstruation is personified as as a hussy in a red dress who brings trouble, but whose disappearance is an occasion for regret.

More somber is the poem "1994" which describes the moment when the poet discovered a lump in her breast, and the very somber but lovely "lumpectomy eve" in which one breast comforts the other. The functions of, and catastrophes endured by, the body have always been powerful universal symbols - the eyes of Oedipus, the liver of Prometheus, the heel of Achilles - and now, since the post World War II period, these body symbols have also become female.

The poem that seems to sum up Clifton's robust energy and engagement is the poem "hag riding." ("Hag," a word that has recovered its respectful meaning since the Women's Movement, was traditionally a wise older woman.) In the poem, the hag speculates that it might be the "afrikan in me" that makes her awaken to the heat of the morning with a sense of hope, which " runs me out into the road" and, as she joyfully notes, "... i lob my fierce thigh high/ over the rump of the day and honey/ i ride i ride."

If you like lively as well as moving lyrics, if you like pieces of everyday life scrutinized for lucid meaning, if you like your free verse musical, so that you can tell the difference between it and prose, you can do no better than to read Lucille Clifton.

first published: New Works Review, Winter 2001

© Joyce Nower