Lucille Clifton was a black poet, writer, and educator during the 1900s through the early 2000s. Lucille Clifton grew up in Buffalo, New York and attended Howard University. Growing up, she was raised in the roots of her family and was told by her mother to always be proud of who she was and all of her accomplishments. Her most famous poems were “Climbing” and “Homage to my Hips”. Just by hearing the titles, one can already tell that all of her work is about her success and struggle to get to her success. All of her work is based on her roots in her family and all of her accomplishments she gained throughout her years. Lucille Clifton uses informal diction, simple syntax, and figurative imagery to show her tone of achievement and success in…show more content… “Her vision, however, is one of sanity, connectedness, light. She can write poems which are bright little gems of perceptive observation” (Waniek, 120). Clifton had a vision when it came to her poetry. “Clifton’s intense exploration of her body” (Henningfield, 121). “Homage to my Hips” is about Clifton expressing her breaking free from slavery. Her few simple lines showed a story behind it. She talks about how she has big hips and needs room to move in. She is saying that she is not just air, and that she is a human being. Back then, slaves were not treated with the same respect and dignity as others. They felt as if they were invisible to the world because of how others treated them. Clifton is showing she and her family’s side of slavery. “You call others forth to be their best selves, and you inspire others toward that” (Glaser, 124). Clifton understands other people's stories and their life because she has gone through the same. Glaser is saying that she calls other to be their best, because Clifton understands them so people are able to relate to her writing and express themselves fully because of her work. “Like many of her metaphors, the idea of enslavement refers both to woman’s bondage and to racial bondage. Clifton undertakes nothing less than the recapture of the inherent strength of her race and of her womanhood, to thus free herself from white ideas about black bodies and from patriarchal assertions about female weakness. (Henningfield, 122). “Homage to my Hips” is about Clifton breaking free from bondage, whether it be racial or female. She brings this topic into her art because she knows that her readers and others can understand what she has gone through. In the poem, she uses empowering words such as “mighty” and “magic” when describing her hips. She is nothing less than
