consider me these hips this
alphabet an echo this symbol
in the hallway surely this tongue
could spin a wow-weaved man
could spin a place to rest to rest
to rest
Lucille Clifton once said, somewhere, that things are better said in threes. She once said that she’d thought of several word options before speaking the one she most fancied. She once said that poetry is about questions, connections. Lucille Clifton said many things outside of poems that felt like poems, and many of us who were blessed to sit in front of her and hear her speak remembers these words. Once, she told us to know beyond the obvious. It’s not difficult to see these little lit bits inside of her poems:
my knees recall the pockets
worn into the stone floor,
my hands, tracing against
the wall their original name, remember
the cold brush of brick, and the smell
of the brick powdery and wet
and the light finding its way in
through the high bars. (from “far memory”)
The lines that open this post are from five friends—Laura Hartmark, Adam Fitzgerald, Anne Rashid, Carrie McGath, and Alexander Long—& are taken from and/or are offered in response to her passing. I am, as many of us are, hurting and healed, mournful and roaring, feeling a little drunk on that have been filling my ears all night and day. There was once a time that I thought her words were too sparse; then there was a time the words ravaged; then a time when the words delighted in their conciseness; then there was a time that i wanted to just stare at the non-punctuation. Then, there was my heart feeling blessed.
On this, the first day of the Tiger 2010, I discover that Lucille Clifton was a fire : “ imaginative, charming, and truly generous to the person you love. . . Born under this sign, you should be happy in sales or as a writer, critic, or publicist.” This space is here, as are others, for you to say, to read, to listen, to appreciate knowing that we each had an opportunity to make the acquaintance of someone who changed so much of what poetry does and how it comes to do it.
The uploaded photograph is courtesy of Rachel Eliza Griffiths.
Metta: So beautiful. Thank you.