Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000 (American Poets Continuum)

I’d seen Lucille Clifton read a few poems on TV and You Tube, but I hadn’t yet read any of her books. I knew “Homage to My Hips,” so I expected some sassy feminism. She did give me sass, wit, feminism, and so much more. I was expecting her to remind me of Maya Angelou, but I found her a bit more like Langston Hughes, who helped promote her work when she was a young writer. I often think “wow,” when I read a favorite author, but, in Clifton’s case, I was saying, “Wow!” aloud.She writes with the economy of words I most admire in poetry. Even with musical repetition in just the right spots, her poems rarely go beyond 20 lines. Her poems even look simple: short lines, often in lower case with no punctuation. That’s where simplicity stops. By the end of a poem, she’s either waved a magic wand over you or struck you with a sledge hammer. I am in awe.Her genius often comes down to one word, the right word, the one you likely would not have chosen. Often those single perfect words were the ones that stopped me, made me read the line again, and mark it in pencil. Here are a couple that had that effect:In “what i think when i ride the train” (about her father who worked for the railroad): “he made the best damn couplers in the whole white world.” “White” is the perfect near-rhyme to replace the expected “wide.” It lets us read between the lines (without having to rant) that her daddy worked hard, saved lives, and didn’t get the recognition and pay he deserved.In “Lazarus (second day),” “i am not the same man borne into the crypt.”“Borne” reminds us that death and birth are opposites and also hints at what we know is coming: Lazarus will be born again. Clifton’s fresh looks at Bible stories were among my favorites. She wrote multiple poems about Lazarus, Adam and Eve, and Lucifer.Other major themes are the sad state of the world, violence, racism, family, womanhood, aging, and cancer. Amid so much bleakness, her wicked humor brings relief. The funniest to me, is “wishes for sons.” She begins “i wish them cramps. i wish them a strange town and the last tampon. i wish them no 7-11.”She continues to wish them hot flashes, cramps, and similar afflictions, and ends “let them think they have accepted arrogance in the universe, then bring them to gynecologists not unlike themselves.”

Some books excel beyond the 5-star limit offered here. This is one of them. Lucille Clifton has a magical, inexplicable way bring the most unpoetic subjects to life--including incest, racism, Lucifer, Eve, and the human body. Clifton's poems exude truth and she isn't afraid to write from the somewhat underrepresented perspective of an African American woman. Even the poems that seem to have a narrow audience (Wishes for Sons, To my Last Period) manage to have a universal quality about them. I've been extremely fortunate to hear her read twice--the only thing that improves upon the purchase of this book is hearing the sublime Ms. Clifton in person. Her voice captivates and reasonates from the pages of her books. Anyone who finds these poems offensive should consider the element of truth in each and every one of them.

Book was not what I expected. It was like listening to the Blues.

good for school

Beautiful. Meaningful. Literary. Complete control of the line.

My favorite poet. A nice selection of poems.

What a breathtaking poet. This has quickly become one of my fave collections. Clifton is amazingly succinct and deftly descriptive. A beautiful woman, beautiful poems.

ReviewPaul L. McGeheeClichés are literary sins, so Lord forgive me when I say Lucile Clifton's Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000, is a blessing to own and an inciteful read. Clifton's lines and questions resonate well within the mind of a human being struggling with the issues of living. Like her story of Cancer in the poem "Dialysis", which leaves me with, "...in my dream a house is burning...in my dream I call it light". On another level, as a Black man I can appreciate her questioning the relationships between men women; love, interracial dating, rape, and lynching. Yet it is as a man comes the only critic, well not so much of a critic as it is the perspective coming from another vessel (so to speak). Clifton's poems run deep with imagery and situations articulating the complexities of being a woman, a black woman, in this society. It gives me incite, after all, mothers and sisters have left an impression of black womanhood on my heart, yet me not being a black woman (no shame hear, no offense), I don't get the poems, wholly and truly. That is it; but it is not enough to say this would not be a great addition to anyone's literary alter.