The Reach of Lucille Clifton
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Several years ago, through a combined project of Sharon Bridgforth and our local YWCA's Racial Justice outreach, I was given the opportunity to teach poetry to a group of African-American preteens at a couple of Austin's public housing projects.
Because of my own background with childhood poverty and having lived in projects myself, I was under no illusions about "bringing the light of art to the downtrodden." I knew most of the girls would be there out of boredom, wanting snacks and a chance to get out of the house. But I had two strong advantages: I really like girls, am not at all intimidated by them, and I do believe poetry saves lives. It certainly saved mine.
That summer was a big part of how I came, finally and completely, into my own voice. Each of the girls I worked with wrote at least one poem, some of them mind-blowing expressions of their particular reality. I vividly remember the day I took in Susan Griffin's "I Like To Think of Harriet Tubman" combined with Holly Near's rendition of "Harriet Tubman", and it turned into a shouting line dance of girls "setting those free who once were bound". [To hear an MP3 of Holly Near singing Walter Robinson's song, click here.]
But it all began, that first day, with Lucille Clifton. I read them "The Pool Players. Seven At The Golden Shovel", four terse couplets, and into the open-mouthed silence which followed, one girl said "Read that again." I did, also handing out copies and telling them about Clifton's life, the pinnacles she had achieved. We were off and running. They turned it into a rap and began adding lines of their own.
I was around their age the first time I read that poem, and it had a similar impact on me, telling a terrible truth with miserly beauty and unleashing actual hope in some perverse fashion. At a later class, I took in this quote from Anna Akhmatova:
"During the terrible years of the Yekhov terror I spent seventeen months in the prison queues in Leningrad. One day someone ‘identified’ me. Then a woman with lips blue with cold who was standing behind me, and of course had never heard of my name, came out of the numbness which affected us all and whispered in my ear—(we all spoke in whispers there):
‘Could you describe this?’
I said, ‘I can!’
Then something resembling a smile slipped over what had once been her face."
That was the day a 12-year-old who had thus far not written a line composed a poem about how much she hated the cops because they had killed her brother. She only wrote it down after I promised to never share it with anyone. After I read it to myself, she took back the sheet and destroyed it. But she wrote it in the first place, and that's what counts.
Lucille Clifton died yesterday. I hope she knew what a difference she made in this world; I rather think she might have. Here are some links to her life and work:
Modern American Poetry page
Poets.org biography
A Lucille Clifton page (several poems included)
You Tube video of Lucille Clifton reading two poems at the 2008 Geraldine Dodge Poetry Festival, "What Haunts Him" and "Sorrows"
Below are four of my favorite poems by her, and at the bottom is the video from the Favorite Poem Project where a working class white youth from Boston,John Ulrich, explains why "The Pool Players" is his favorite poem. Let her words roll on forever, a lifeline traveling from town to town.
THE POOL PLAYERS.
SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL.
We real cool.
We left school.
We lurk late.
We strike straight.
We sing sin.
We thin gin.
We jazz June.
We die soon.
CUTTING GREENS
curling them around
i hold their bodies in obscene embrace
thinking of everything but kinship.
collards and kale
strain against each strange other
away from my kissmaking hand and
the iron bedpot.
the pot is black.
the cutting board is black,
my hand,
and just for a minute
the greens roll black under the knife,
and the kitchen twists dark on its spine
and i taste in my natural appetite
the bond of live things everywhere.
MY MAMA MOVED AMONG THE DAYS
My Mama moved among the days
like a dreamwalker in a field;
seemed like what she touched was here
seemed like what touched her couldn't hold,
she got us almost through the high grass
then seemed like she turned around and ran
right back in
right back on in
WISHES FOR SONS
i wish them cramps.
i wish them a strange town
and the last tampon.
I wish them no 7-11.
i wish them one week early
and wearing a white skirt.
i wish them one week late.
later i wish them hot flashes
and clots like you
wouldn't believe. let the
flashes come when they
meet someone special.
let the clots come
when they want to.
let them think they have accepted
arrogance in the universe,
then bring them to gynecologists
not unlike themselves.
