blessing the boats lucille clifton meaning

And the first half is inviting a gaze on her body, the “big woman” she speaks about. And the epigraph she uses from Sonia Sanchez is from a poem called “Poem at Thirty.” And so there’s such an interesting thing about being a woman, being an African-American woman, and being an African-American woman who states her age that, I think, is really interesting, happening in this poem. Lucille Clifton was in her late 50s when this poem was published in The Book of Light in 1992. The first one is called “song at midnight.” The second one is untitled but comes right after it, and so, sometimes they’re seen as two halves of one poem and, other times, seen to operate separately.

This poem is a poem of two halves, really. They are so intelligent and clear they don’t get in their way, and they are filled with their own music, which is a music of power and precision. They are beautiful, and they know what they’re doing. She doesn’t use any capital letters, and her poems are always short and so distilled. Ó Tuama: Well, Lucille Clifton was on my list for this season in fact, she’s probably on my list for every season. This poem has an epigraph at the beginning: “…do not send me out / among strangers” from Sonia Sanchez. Ó Tuama: “song at midnight” by Lucille Clifton.

But, in so doing, you can find a language for yourself that can help you survive. And that can be lonely, but, also, it can be a magnificent way to find a language that suits yourself, in those alone hours, maybe in the morning, maybe late at night. While it can, sometimes, get shared in books or in readings, mostly poems are written by a person, alone, with a computer or with a pen or a pencil. Pádraig Ó Tuama, host: My name is Pádraig Ó Tuama, and poetry is a fairly solitary art.

Blessing the boats lucille clifton meaning