Clifton, Lucille

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CLIFTON, Lucille

Born Lucille Sayles in 1936, Depew, New York

Married Fred Clifton (died 1984); children: six

"What I knew was true about me was that I could breathe and I made poems," Lucille Clifton said about herself as a child, in a Belles Lettres interview with Naomi Thiers in 1994. But she never aspired to be a professional poet because, she said "I hadn't thought it possible…. The only poets I ever saw or heard of were… old dead white men from New England with beards." Today Clifton is a prolific, prize-winning poet and writer of children's books, who in recent years has been awarded Pulitzer recognition. Known for her simple verses and quiet, powerful tone, Clifton illuminates the ordinary with a life-affirming vision that is widely celebrated by critics.

Lucille Clifton was born in 1936 near Buffalo in Depew, New York, a place she described as "a small town, …all its life turned like a machine around the steel mill." Her parents were part of the Southern African-American migration north. Clifton explained: "We were poor but not downtrodden. We didn't have much money, but we had a lot of love." Her mother wrote poetry that she would read aloud to her four children. Clifton once said, "From Mama I knew one could write as a way to express oneself."

In her autobiography, Generations: A Memoir (1976), which was reprinted in a later book of collected works, Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980 (1987), Clifton wrote, "When the colored people came to Depew they came to be a family. Everybody began to be related in thin ways that last and last " Jean Anaporte-Easton said that, thematically and spiritually, Clifton's work is shaped by a "vision of the web which connects us" and a strong rootedness in her ancestry. In particular, Clifton often cites her great-great-grandmother, Ca'line, who was captured in the Dahomey Republic of West Africa and brought to New Orleans as a slave in 1830, as an inspirational and mythical presence in her life.

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. B. Spellman, and others. In 1958 she married Fred Clifton. They were married for 27 years and had six children together when he died in 1984.

One of the most important influences on Clifton's writing was the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which advocated the use of the arts as a means of overcoming racial oppression and actively promoted African-American cultural and political nationalism. Clifton's work expresses a strong affirmation of African-American experience and identity, consistently addresses the problems of racial injustice, and advocates for black children and families in the language, metaphors, and rhythms of black vernacular speech. As critic Haki Madhubhuti put it, Clifton is a "black cultural poet. We see in her work a clear transmission of values."

Clifton's style is spare: she uses little punctuation; her use of words and space is economical; the words and lines tend to be short, as do the poems themselves. She writes in free verse and frequently uses only lowercase letters. She deliberately uses simple words in her poetry because, she says, "I am interested in trying to render big ideas in a simple way. I am interested in being understood, not admired." Critics, including Madhubhuti often agree with her: "Clifton's style is simple and solid, like rock and granite." This apparent simplicity is belied, however, by the resonant imagery and lyrical rhythms that characterize her poems. Like other 20th-century black women poets, Clifton's verses have often been stylistically compared to black women's blues music. Audrey McClusky wrote that she takes a "moral stance" and is "guided by the dictates of her own consciousness rather than the dictates of form, structure and audience." The result is poetry that is often richly imagistic, emotive, and a clear expression of Clifton's perspective and integrity as a woman of color.

Clifton's first published collection, Good Times: Poems (1969), won the Discovery award and was cited by the New York Times as one of the best books of 1969. Like her second collection, Good News About the Earth: New Poems (1972), these early volumes reflect the political climate of their time. They pointedly examine racial issues, focusing on contemporary African-American public figures like Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver, Angela Davis, and the Black Panthers.

At the same time she began publishing her poetry, Clifton was also the mother of six children under the age of ten and began to write children's books. She has often credited her children and her role as a mother as among her most important influences as a poet, saying, for example, "Having six children kept me human." In 1970 Clifton's first children's book, The Black BC's came out, followed by nearly 20 other books, including the well-known Everett Anderson series, which celebrates pride in black history and heritage.

While her first two books of poetry were critically successful, the critical success of the next two, An Ordinary Woman (1974) and Two-Headed Woman (1980), confirmed Clifton's place as a major "contemporary African-American poet." Coinciding in time with the women's movement, these two volumes turn away from broad racial issues to take up the more personal subject of Clifton's life as a woman of color.

Subsequent volumes of poetry follow the trajectory of Clifton's life as an aging poet, widow, and grandmother, and continue her commentary on contemporary life from her trademark life-affirming vision. Most recently, The Terrible Stories: Poems (1996) details her own experiences with breast cancer and mastectomy. Embracing the good with the bad and always reaching for wholeness and healing, she wrote, "All night it is the one breast /comforting the other." Madhubuti wrote, "She is always looking for the good, the best, but not naively so. Her work is realistic and burning with the energy of renewal." Clifton was the Poet Laureate of Maryland from 1989 to 1991 and in the late 1990s was the Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary's College in St. Mary's City, Maryland.

Bibliography:

Anaporte-Easton, J., "'She Has Made Herself Again': The Maternal Impulse as Poetry" in 13th Moon 9 (1991). Belles Lettres (Summer 1994). Evans, M., ed., Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation. Metzger, L., et al, eds., Black Writers: A Selection of Sketches from Contemporary Authors (1989). Middlebrook, D. and M. Yalow, eds., Coming to Light: American Women Poets in the Twentieth Century (1985). WRB (Mar. 1997).