Quilting - Foxes in the Poetry of Lucille Clifton In 1942 Virginia Woolf read a paper to the Women’s Service League about "The Angel in the House." For Woolf, this "Angel" represented the voice in the back of the mind of a woman that was saying, "Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own" (1346). During Woolf’s time a woman was not supposed to write critically. Rather, a woman was supposed to "be sympathetic; be tender; flatter; deceive; use all the arts and wiles of her sex."
The Feminist Dynamic of Lucille Clifton Quilting bees were occasions for women to gather bringing discarded scraps of material, which they masterfully transformed, into works of art. The bee was also a social gathering where women told tales, exchanged ideas, and encouraged one another. Lucille Clifton's collection of poetry entitled Quilting continues the wonderful tradition by skillfully bringing together poems that entertain, inform, and encourage. Two of Clifton's poems, "eve's version"
initial reactions. One way of dealing with discrimination is to feed into it with anger; loathing. The second way to handle prejudices is to ignore them. These two different viewpoints are demonstrated in Lucille Clifton’s poem “Memory” in her book of poems, Blessing the Boats. In this poem, Lucille Clifton uses both the speaker’s and the mother’s perspective to express two completely views
In her poem "stop", Lucille Clifton calls attention to the AIDS epidemic occurring in Central and South Africa. The poem is dedicated to Nkosi Johnson, a child AIDS advocate that died at the age of 12 from the disease. Nkosi was one of the thousand African children that suffer from HIV-related health problems and Clifton is attempting to spread awareness for this crisis. Excluding the various "stops", the poem is written in the sonnet form of 8 lines in the first stanza and 6 lines in the second
Society has a way of making people think everyone should look a certain way but that's not true! Lucille Clifton, an inspiring poet, made sure of this throughout her poems ("Lucille Clifton") Enduring a lot of things in life as a child and adult Clifton still came out to be a strong woman. Lucille Clifton, author of "homage to my hips" grew up with an abusive father which contributes to her poem theme accepting one's body for what it is no matter what society says. Clifton's past, enduring sexual
According to Jocelyn Moody, the contemporary poet Lucille Clifton was born on June 27, 1936 in Depew, NY. She was very smart and always proved it ever since she was young. As result, she graduated very young, at the age of sixteen. As soon as she graduated she graduated she received a scholarship to attend Howard University located in Washington, D.C. Two years after, in 1955 she transferred to the Fredonia State Teachers College. She met Fred Clifton; he thought philosophy at the University of Buffalo
Cancer and Lucille Clifton's Poetry Sometimes knowledge of someone’s life can be taught by stanzas. It is not always simple being honest and open to discuss past troubles, but it is important that those negative thoughts do not stay bottled inside you. Expressing these feelings can help aid in recovering. Lucille Clifton uses poetry as her therapy to bring out all the shadows in her life. From the beginning of her career with the publishing of Good News About the Earth in 1972 to the most
'Homage to my Hips'; and 'Her Kind';. The speakers in this stories have very different attitudes, and approaches in telling their story about the same topic. While talking about the oppression of women, both Lucille Clifton and Anne Sexton take the own stance on the situation. While Clifton expresses her proud and self-confident attitude, Sexton on the other hand speaks in a very snotty, self-righteous tone. Each of these extremely influential woman, that I will be talking about describe their own
My name is Lucille Clifton, but my birth name is Thelma Lucille Sayles. I was born on June 27th 1936 in New York to Samuel and Thelma Moore Sayles, and later died at the age of 73 on February 13th 2010. My parents never had the best education, but they supported me nonetheless in my own education, and after I received my high-school diploma, I went to study at Harvard university. Sadly, I was kicked out due to bad grades and had to continue my college career at Fredonia State Teacher’s College.
Poetry Analysis Legal Alien by Pat Mora and Forgiving My Father by Lucille Clifton are poems that reflect sentimental values that connect with our society. However, a correlation and contrast exists between the two poems. On the one hand, Legal Alien is a piece of literature that describes the life of a person of hispanic descent struggling for social acceptance on a daily basis due to society’s racial perspective. With this in mind, there is a tension due to the character’s racial background that
patients of color. While the phenomenon of racial and gender discrimination in medicine has received more attention in recent years, a solution to the issue is still unresolved. In the poem, “1944”, Lucille Clifton depicts her life story following her diagnosis with breast cancer. Throughout the piece, Clifton repeatedly references “coldness” and the “winter”
The presence of complex relationships in a person’s life will often have great impacts on his or her actions. The nature of these impacts can either have a negative or positive result in the end. In Lucille Clifton’s poem entitled “forgiving my father,” readers discover the speaker’s parents have both passed away; however, the narrator is haunted by memories of dissension between her and her father. These memories force the narrator to keep her father accountable for his wrongdoings without granting
example of the unfair stipulations placed on women in today’s patriarchal society. Lucille Clifton, an avid women right’s advocate, has dedicated the majority of her life to the progression of women’s rights through her writing. In her poem, “homage to my hips,” Clifton uses “hips” to symbolize women and their desire for equality in today’s male dominated world. Clifton’s poem attempts
and sometimes harmonious conditions that plagued Africans during slavery and the slave trade. By reading the actual words, thoughts, and feelings of these enslaved Africans, modern writers receive information from the perspective of the victimized. Lucille Clifton's "slaveship" is a vivid example of a contemporary writer borrowing from the past to depict another account of the slave trade. The fact that Clifton's father told her stories about her family's struggle and she, herself, traced her lineage
seeks to lead us away from God and into his own realm of fear, torment, and undying agony. He is to be shunned and feared, lest he bring us to perdition. He is not human and he possesses none of the traits of a good person, only the bad ones. Lucille Clifton uses Lucifer in quite a number of her poems. She does not use him in the traditional role of the inhuman enemy who is to be feared. Rather, she imbues him with human qualities and shows him as a flawed being who was, nevertheless, loved and missed
The title of Lucille Clifton's poem, "forgiving my father", seems to be in sharp opposition with the poem itself. There seems to be no forgiveness, yet the title claims that it is there. The entire poem focuses on the debt of the author's father. "it is Friday." she says, "we have come to the paying of the bills." (1-2). But perhaps it doesn't necessarily mean that it is literally Friday, perhaps she just means it is the end, and maybe the debt isn't one of money, but of love. Clifton is using a monetary
by what reproductive parts we are born with, but what really defines a woman? There is more than what parts we have or what our chests look like. There is more to a woman that many do not know, not even some women themselves. Maya Angelou and Lucille Clifton are nationally recognized authors and poets that advocate women’s rights, independence and beauty. Their work gives insight on what really defines a woman and as many have criticized their works they learn and agree with the messages behind it
Harlem Renaissance. The Harlem Renaissance started in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem. Many new artists, musicians, and writers emerged in this renaissance. Writers such as Langston Hughes, Lucille Clifton, and Colleen McElroy were especially important in this time. Langston Hughes, Lucille Clifton, and
In “Forgiving my father” written by Lucille Clifton, she wrote the poem in first person perspective which in this case the daughter. It become obvious later on the poem when the daughter called her father “daddy old pauper old prisoner, old dead man”(Clifton 20). The speaker seems to have a hard time trying to forgive her father because of financial stability and the problems her father caused. Clifton was able to asserted the words bills, payday and also due to emphasize money as a metaphor throughout
America Evolving Through Time The poems “I Hear America Singing” by Walt Whitman, “America” by Claude McKay, and “We Are Running” by Lucille Clifton all sketch a robust image of the importance of time. Although each poem is written within a different period of American history, the reader easily fuses the poems together by focusing on the fascination of time displayed throughout each of the poems. In “I Hear America Singing” the author leads the reader through a typical workday of early American