Lucille Clifton

4 Pages 916 Words

Lucille Clifton



In the poems “The Lost Baby Poem”, “She Understands Me”, and “Homage to My Hips”, Lucille Clifton is letting the reader know how she feels about life issues. In the three poems, Clifton does a great job of simplifying reproduction, abortion, and beauty. She makes very strong points about the way she feels. Clifton’s poems seem guided by her own experience and consciousness. In “She Understands Me”, the author is telling us about the time she had a baby; how she lived through her child again. In “The Lost Baby Poem”, Clifton is telling us about abortion, and how it must have been for the baby, and the way she felt about abortion. In “Homage to My Hips”, the author is telling us how she looks, and that she can get any man she wants. Her style throughout these poems is simple, very descriptive, and constant. Clifton’s poems are simple in language, complex in ideas, and reflective of everyday issues.
In “The Lost Baby Poem,” Clifton explains why the mother did not have her child. It would have been born in winter, in a time where she had financial problems. Perhaps she would have given up her baby for adoption. Lucille Clifton uses the image of water and drowning to speak of the abortion through, “waters rushing.” She also uses the image of poverty through, “disconnected gas, and no car.” In the last lines of the poem, “Let the rivers pour over my head,” “Let black men call me stranger,” I believe the image is that the woman promises her unborn child that she will be the best mother to the children she already has, and that if she breaks her promise she should get punished by those things. The woman described in this poem sounds like she was strong. Clifton uses shot sentences, with no capitalization, and punctuation.
In “Homage to My Hips,” Clifton captures the reality and symbolism of the body. She uses her body to express herself, as she accepts it as it is, ...