Episode 152
I’ve been thinking about how many small steps build to a momentous journey.
The Back Porch
Ever-expanding Skill Set
Off the Shelf
Clifton is noted for saying much with few words. In a Christian Century review of Clifton’s work, Peggy Rosenthal commented, “The first thing that strikes us about Lucille Clifton’s poetry is what is missing: capitalization, punctuation, long and plentiful lines. We see a poetry so pared down that its spaces take on substance, become a shaping presence as much as the words themselves” In an American Poetry Review article about Clifton’s work, Robin Becker commented on Clifton’s lean style: “Clifton’s poetics of understatement—no capitalization, few strong stresses per line, many poems totaling fewer than twenty lines, the sharp rhetorical question—includes the essential only.” — from Poetry Foundation website
- “homage to my hips” by Lucille Clifton
- Clifton reads “won’t you celebrate with me“