Poetic Thursday: Lucille Clifton Made the Ordinary Worthy of Poetry
2 min read
Lucille Clifton did not need elaborate language to make a poem powerful. She wrote about women, family, bodies, love, aging, motherhood, grief and survival with a simplicity that made her work feel intimate. Her poems often read like someone telling you the truth across a kitchen table. Born in 1936, Clifton published her first collection, Good Times, in 1969. The book was named one of the year’s best by The New York Times. She went on to publish Good News About the Earth, An Ordinary Woman, Two-Headed Woman and many other collections. She later became Maryland’s poet laureate and won the National Book Award for Blessing the Boats.
What makes Clifton especially memorable is the way she gave everyday Black life room on the page. A woman’s hips could become a celebration. An aging woman could still command dignity. Mothers, daughters, lovers and ordinary people were treated as subjects worthy of poetry. Her work could address race and injustice, but Clifton was never limited to either subject. She wrote about being human. That freedom allowed her poetry to move easily between humor, desire, pain, memory and joy.
One of her most memorable poems, “miss rosie,” looks at a woman whose life has changed dramatically with age. Clifton refuses to look away from her decline, but she also refuses to forget who Rosie once was. The final act of the poem is one of recognition and respect. That ability to see the complete person is part of Clifton’s gift. Her poems remind us that ordinary lives contain extraordinary material, whether the subject is history, womanhood, family or the person sitting across from you at the dinner table.
Read Our Review
Want to spend more time with Lucille Clifton’s work? Read our review of Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969–1980, a collection that brings together more than a decade of her poetry and personal writing.
Read our review of Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969–1980.
