Cancer and Lucille Cliftons Poetry Essay -- Lucille Clifton poem Poet

Cancer and Lucille Clifton's Poetry Sometimes knowledge of someone’s life can be taught by stanzas. It is not always simple being honest and open to discuss past troubles, but it is important that those negative thoughts do not stay bottled inside you. Expressing these feelings can help aid in recovering. Lucille Clifton uses poetry as her therapy to bring out all the shadows in her life. From the beginning of her career with the publishing of Good News About the Earth in 1972 to the most recent addition, Mercy in 2004, we see how Clifton relies on her writing to capture her past. Lucille Clifton’s poetry traces the life of a strong woman imprisoned by loss and disease, but eventually frees herself by living each moment as if it were her last. When you open up one of Lucille Clifton’s books of poetry, you will first notice her unique form. Her poems lack capitalization, punctuation, and many of her poems reject the normal etiquette for spacing. They are often described as â€Å"spare in form, deceptively simple in language, complex in ideas, and reflective of the commonplace† (Houston). The lack in form seems to be very significant because there are some poems where capitalization and punctuation are used. In Holladay’s Wild Blessings, it is suggested that â€Å"like the Beat poets, black activist poets were reacting against the political and literary establishment†(19). There is importance in the lack of form, but it seems that Clifton was not aiming to revolutionize, but merely make a point that the way the poem is written reflects her feelings on the subject. In 1972 Clifton published Good News About the Earth, which addresses societal issues of the time, heroism, family and religion. We see the first instanc... ...eel that she has found some peace with her troubles. She no longer questions the worst, but instead stops the talking and lives her life without fear of the unknown. Works Cited Clifton, Lucille . Good News About The Earth. New York: Random House, 1972. Clifton, Lucille . Mercy. Rochester: BOA Editions, Ltd., 2004. Clifton, Lucille . The Terrible Stories. Brockport: BOA Editions, Ltd., 1996. Hartman, Stephanie. "Reading The Scar in Breast Cancer Poetry." Feminist Studies 2004. 09 Apr 2006 Holladay, Hilary. Wild Blessings: The Poetry of Lucille Clifton. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004. Houston, Helen R. "About Lucille Clifton." Modern American Poetry. 1995. 09 Apr. 2006 . "The Terrible Stories." Amazon.ca: Editorial Reviews Books. 1996. Publishers Weekly. 09 Apr. 2006 . (amazon).