But in a Language Arts interview with Rudine Sims, Clifton indicated that she does not think of it as poetry especially for children. Generations: A Memoir (prose), Random House (New York, NY), 1976. Gillian, Sidney, and Alexia Clifton accepting Poetry Society award for their mother. The family was poor; however, because their love sustained them, they were not worn down by penury. ", In Clifton's 1991 title, Quilting: Poems 1987–1990, the author uses a quilt as a poetic metaphor for life. DuBois, Huey P. Newton, and many other people who gave their lives to [free] black people from slavery and prejudice. Clifton’s other books for children include The Black BC’s (1970), which teaches the ABC’s from an Afro-centric perspective. This is a distinctly human insight, one that we see frequently in Clifton's poetry, especially her biblical poems. SYMBOL How is the world where the mother and daughter quilt different from the alchemists’ world? Through her account of public events from 1988 through 2000, Clifton calls into question the status of America's collective consciousness, Newson-Horst maintains. Everett Anderson's Christmas Coming, illustrations by Evaline Ness, Holt (New York, NY), 1971, illustrations by Jan Spivey Gilchrist, Holt (New York, NY), 1991. INTRODUCTION In the wake of her mother's death, she determines that her own writing—and all of her life-affirming acts—will be a form of penance: "Everything for her, everything, all poems, all movings-up, all goodnesses, everything begging, begging, Mama, Mama of Magic, forgive. As "brothers" indicates, Christianity is another major theme in The Book of Light; in this eight-part poem, an aged Lucifer explains God's silence in the face of change on Earth. Encyclopedia.com. "There is little question that the devil was a principal player in African-American religious belief and lore and therefore in the mythologies of the blues," Jon Michael Spencer writes in Blues and Evil, "and it is most probable that the emphasis on devil-lore among southern blacks was an early modern Europeanism dating back to the thirteenth century. According to Clifton, her father called the devil "the forky-tailed man. The North American Review, May-August, 2001. However, most of her major characters are African Americans and have names children can associate with. She was raised in Buffalo, New York. 14 likes. The collection closes with section 5, eighteen poems from the 1996 volume The Terrible Stories. But Clifton is making an epistemological point, distinct from Emerson's claims for the Oversoul's unifying properties, that becomes increasingly important to the sequence's overall meaning. The story of the world since then, Clifton implies through her rhetorically savvy persona, has revolved in large part around frustrated human attempts to reestablish a conversation with God. 25 Noteworthy Quotes By Lucille Clifton . The point is not that Man literally looks like God, or that, for lack of a more appealing model, we imagine God in our own image. Supported by a full scholarship provided by her church, she attended Howard from 1953 to 1955, a period during which Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka), A. The complex image of her hair conjures up a woman who is part furious Medusa and part submissive spouse. SOURCE: Holladay, Hilary. She is recalling one of her mother's concerns about her, which, in the context of this poem, is a metaphor for Thelma's fear that her daughter will have trouble attracting a man: The first line immediately signals to us that cooking and eating will symbolize female sexuality. 20, 69, 128; St. James Guide to Children's Writers, Vol. Born Thelma Lucille Sayles to Thelma Moore Sayles and Samuel Sayles in 1936, Lucille Clifton was raised by her parents in Depew, a small town in upstate New York. Though he may want to imply equality by saying he is "beside" God, he then admits that he is actually beneath Him, at His feet. Since fall 1994, Clifton has taught at St. Mary's College one semester during the academic year and at Columbia University in New York City one semester. She won the National Book Award for Poetry for "Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000" and was the first African American female recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement from the Poetry Foundation. Adele S. Newson-Horst observes that in Clifton's Blessing the Boats, the poet uses a clear, lucid style to suggest that the problems plaguing modern society, including racism, drug abuse, and cancer, stem from the lack of a cohesive national identity. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 5: American Poets since World War II, 1980, Volume 41: Afro-American Poets since 1955, 1985. Booklist, June 15, 1991, p. 1926; May 1, 1997, p. 1506; August, 1996, Patricia Monaghan, review of The Terrible Stories, p. 1876; March 15, 2000, Donna Seaman, review of Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988–2000, p. 1316; January 1, 2001, p. 874. Washington Post, November 10, 1974, Lee A. Daniels, review of Times They Used to Be; August 9, 1979. Clifton attended Howard University in Washington, D.C. (1953-1955) and Fredonia State Teacher's College (now State University of New York at Fredonia) in Fredonia, New York (1955), where as a drama major she performed plays, developed a writing style, and first met and associated with an emerging class of black intellectuals that included LeRoi Jones, A. Responding to a critic who was disappointed that Clifton "played the race card," the writer remarked, "It's not a game and I'm not playing." Clifton's first four volumes of poetry and her memoir, Generations, are available in this compilation. Wild Blessings, Baton Rouge, La. The word "excommunication," typically denoting expulsion from the Catholic Church, in this context implies that a world containing so much cruelty warrants divine censure, regardless of whether God actually articulates it. The rejected female body is finally a "beaten thing," whose bloated size testifies only to Thelma's overheated, unmet desires, "the oven of your hunger.". Through the figure of Lucifer, Clifton gradually comes to terms with this silence and affirms her faith in a higher power and the redemptive grace of poetry. Bedient criticized the poems in the collection that take an overtly political tone, taking issue with "Clifton's politics of championing difference—except, of course, where the difference opposes her politics."