Lucille Clifton on sounding like yourself
“So how do you learn what you can from a poem?
You allow it in yourself. You allow it to do its work in you.”
Lucille Clifton
source: https://lannan.org/bios/lucille-clifton
If there is one poet that has impacted me more than any other, it’s Lucille Clifton. And not just her poetry, but the way she thought and spoke about poetry, and the way she existed in the world. I’m including several of her poems for this week’s imitation study, because 1) they’re so good, and they’re all short 2) it will be much easier to experience and learn from what she’s doing, how she sees, and the ways she crafts her poems, with a small gathering of them.
Her infamous words “I am a Black woman poet, and I sound like one.” have gifted permission and bravery to so many. She was a self-described shy person, who said and did bold, big things.
“I am not an American poet who happens to be black. I did not happen to be black. My mother was black, and my father was black. And so there I was. I was gonna be black! It didn’t just zap me. And that’s okay, that is all right, that is not a subgenre of anything. I am an American poet; this is what American poetry is.”3
And while she consistently wrote and spoke in ways that asserted herself, critiqued systems, and claimed her own authority and place, she was not precious about fame or being a poet. When asked, towards the end of her life, “How did you know that you were a poet?”, she replied “I still don’t. I know I write poems. I have a lot of unsure days and I know I can be tremendously corny… big-time corny, you know? And clichéd. But once in a while, I hit.”
She continues “People have a romantic idea of what it means to be a poet. People even have a romantic idea of who can be a poet. Certainly a person like myself, they wouldn’t think. When my first book of poetry came out, my kids were 7, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1. I keep that in mind. And somewhere, in some place I’ve never heard of, is somebody who writes better than I do, you know? What poetry does, and what people in the validating places do, are two different things. The poetry establishment doesn’t seem to validate certain kinds of poetry. Good poetry is everywhere. We often want somebody else to decide our validity, I think.”5
✍️ Try it:
❶ Try taking her statement “I am a Black woman writer, and I sound like one.”, and adapt it to make your own declarations about who you are right now and why it’s valid to sound like it. i.e. “I am an exhausted, overwhelmed, witty, new to poetry, trying-to-be-hopeful mom, and I sound like one.” or “I am a person in the middle of a faith crisis and I sound like one.” or “I am a brilliant, compassionate 56-year-old, and I sound like one.” We can borrow her posture of acknowledging and not apologizing for who we are and what we sound like— it might open a door to a different kind of creating.
❷ Imitating “Blessing the Boats”, write a short poem that blesses something or someone in your life. Try using clear language and short lines.
❸ Imitating “Study the Masters”, title your poem with a suggestion you’ve been given at some point in your life.
💌 Writing invite #2
Try starting your free-write with the sentence “I don’t think I’ve ever____”.
Let whatever comes, come.
“Don’t cross out. (That is editing as you write. Even if you write something you didn’t mean to write, leave it.) Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar. (Don’t even care about staying within the margins and lines on the page.) Lose control. Don’t think. Don’t get logical. Go for the jugular. (If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it. It probably has lots of energy.) What writing practice, like Zen practice does, is bring you back to the natural state of mind…The mind is raw, full of energy, alive and hungry. It does not think in the way we were brought up to think-well-mannered, congenial. Writing is the crack through which you can crawl into a bigger world, into your wild mind.”
― Natalie Goldberg
Thank you for all your sharing and feedback in the chat. It was my favorite place on the internet this week. You are all incredible and brave and generous, and you sound like it. ❤️
https://reflections.yale.edu/article/sex-gender-power-reckoning/study-masters-poem-lucille-clifton
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/58816/blessing-the-boats
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/68875/she-could-tell-you-stories
https://thedewdrop.org/2020/06/10/lucille-clifton-why-some-people-be-mad-at-me-sometimes/
https://mosaicmagazine.org/lucille-clifton-interview/
https://mentorandmuse.net/shara-mccallum-lucille-clifton/
https://reflections.yale.edu/article/future-race/i-am-accused-tending-past
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50974/wont-you-celebrate-with-me