Lucille Clifton Analysis

Lucille Clifton

Introduction

Lucille Clifton represents a double dose of uniqueness in the world of poetry; she is a woman, she is black, and she is powerful. She represents an unabashed version of poets. She is not afraid of speaking what is on her mind and does not mind the fact that some people will be offended. Her confidence in herself, her skin, her physique, and her heritage are unmistakable in the works that she produces. This is a woman who has written a poem about her hips, and the poem has become a literary treasure. She is who she is and does not care what others think. However, above that, she is a literary genius. She blends a cadence into her work that makes it unmistakably great. Lucille Clifton writes poems that the country

The action creates a melody that is distinct to the works of the great poet. One can almost sing the poem as the word ‘hips’ forms the base point. The homily she is paying to her physical form is almost sacred in a way (Clifton & Glaser 313). She is proud of what she is and what she is. It is clear that she considers her hips a part of who she is. It is pride in one body that is rare. That in itself leads to the deeper meaning. By expressing herself and showing her pride in herself, Lucille is communicating her position in the literary world. Just as her hips cannot be constrained so is her voice. She will speak, and she will demand to be hard. Her hips will not be confined to petty places and neither will her voice. She does not have the time to restrict herself for the comfort of others. Her hips need to move, and so does her intellect and literary material. She needs the space to be herself, and she will demand it. The word ‘free’ is also significant. Her hips are free, and so is she. Her ancestor’s hips might have been enslaved, but hers are not. Therefore, she will swing her hips and let them be free. In a period of racial tension, the indefatigable woman was claiming to the world that she is free. In that context, the poem is an homage to a period of uncertainty and the drive for the dominated to seek their independence and assert their voice. The African-American form was

The fox comes to the door every day and poet is afraid of it. Foxes are wily and crafty. In lore, they are always presented as the clever predators they are. At this point, one imagines that the poet is afraid of the fox because of that. It is also indicative that Lucille decides that the Fox will be female. As has been enumerated in this paper, gender is a critical aspect of the poet’s work. She is not ashamed to bring her femininity into her work, and she wields it like a weapon. The fox is females, and she is scary. She is not afraid to come back again and again and look through the window. Lucille has knocked on the windows and doors of the literary world for years. She demanded to be heard, and she stayed there until the industry had no choice. She was as wily and as crafty as the fox. One can even extend the analogy and say that she is talking about the whole group of African-American female poets. They have been on the outside for a while. They scare the insiders with the stories that they would tell. The poet’s other works hint at what stories the poets might have. The poems are dark; they are different; they are ethnic. Every morning she would rise and so would the fox. At every event, Lucille and those like her would rise and so would those who were afraid of them. They would look at each other; one with fear and the other one with intent. The