The Limits of Celebration in Lucille Clifton’s Poetry: Writing the Aging Woman’s Body

This article explores the role of the aging body in Lucille Clifton's poetry. It focuses on the intricate and changing relationship among age, race, sexuality, reproduction, disease, and body size as her poetry progresses. Literary criticism on Clifton typically stresses the life-affirming, celebratory nature of her depiction of the black female body. Clifton's focus on race is historically significant; Alicia Ostriker points out that Clifton began writing during the Black Arts Movement and purposely engaged its celebratory themes early on. Therefore, a Black Arts framework dominates the criticism on Clifton's poetry from the 1960s and 1970s. Feminist critics have focused on both race and gender with an emphasis on Clifton's praise of the black female body. But this focus on rejoicing in the body has obscured the role of the aging, black female body in Clifton's work. Clifton's poetry is ideal for demonstrating that age cannot be divorced from issues of race and gender since Clifton grounds her poetry in the body.