So the summer of celebrity death has passed, but February has turned out to be even worse, with true, impacting artists who always created something increasing original and against the grain. J.D. Salinger, designer Alexander McQueen, and, as of Saturday, poet Lucille Clifton. Mourned by the writing community but not gaining headlines as the author of “Catcher in the Rye” has, Clifton had a profound impact on women and the craft of poetry. Never shy, always embracing her femininity, Clifton took the issue of body image and turned it into something literature hadn’t quite seen before with “Homage to my Hips,” an unapologetic ode now found in many literature textbooks & poetry anthologies:
Homage to My Hips
these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don’t fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don’t like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!
It is fun (especially when she reads it- http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15599) it’s refreshing, no restraints of capitalization, and the daring of using an exclamation point, a poet’s most withheld character. It’s a cheer, you can hear her saying it all in your head and there’s so much pride and total lack of giving a damn what anybody thinks…I love it, and I hope her death spurs a look back at her work that will plant this poem in many high school textbooks (or at least have someone hand it to you the day you start puberty as a girl, hah).
As I was rereading her work online, I found this poem I’d never read before, it’s really quite lovely and I thought I’d post it.
blessing the boats
(at St. Mary’s)
may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that
Tags: literature, poetry
