Lucille Clifton's Poetry

Lucille Clifton calls her poetry "celebratory," and her poem "homage to my hips" can serve as an example. In this poem, she celebrates herself in one sense, but in a larger sense she celebrates freedom as demonstrated by her ability to move her body in whatever way she wants. The poem may be, as its title states, a homage to the poet's hips, but the reason for the homage is that those hips themselves celebrate freedom.

The poet begins as if in the middle of a discussion of her hips and indicates the need for freedom:

Her hips are valued and have importance, and so they do not "fit into little petty places." Rather, they "are free hips," and they celebrate that freedom in the way they move and in the space they occupy as they move. The hips can be seen as a synecdoche, meaning that they are the part that stands in for the whole. In this case, they are the part of the body that represents the poet herself--she is free, she asserts her freedom, and she, like her hips, does not "like to be held back."

The hips of the poet have a sensuality that is emphasized most in the final lines:

The poet's use of her hips as representing freedom also gives the poem a comic tone as the poet talks again and again of her hips, their freedom, their reality, as if they had a mind of their own and an existence apart from her. The

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Category: Literature - L