Our Commencement was jolted by a reading of Martin Espada’s “Imagine the Angels of Bread.”
Willa Cather and Lucille Clifton were quoted in our end-of-the-year awards ceremony last week.
Encountering a dead bird outside my window, I recalled a Lucille Clifton poem on the subject that draws a powerful social message.
In her Garden of Eden poems, Lucille Clifton sees heaven as a stifling morality that both Eve and Satan are trying to break through. Apples in this drama are symbols of female sensuality.
Andrew Sullivan says that we should not look for a savior in gay rights issues because, in America, “we save ourselves.” The sentiment also appears in a Lucille Clifton poem that appeared following the assassination of Martin Luther King.
Something happened in the course of the recent U. S. Open tournament. Lucille Clifton’s poem is about the “damn wonder” of renewal, and golf is catching a whiff of something fresh in the boy-faced Rory McIlroy.
According to the church calendar, we are still in the Easter season,and the hope of the resurrection continues to be mirrored in beautiful May days. Lucille Clifton intermingles the spirituality of religion and the sensuality of life as well as any poet I know. Here’s a poem in her Jesus series. As far as she’s concerned, there’s no conflict between religious ecstasy and the sights and sounds of spring or the wonderful smells emanating from people’s kitchens and the music from their radios.
Posted in Clifton (Lucille) | Also tagged l |
We had our major awards ceremony this past Saturday. As is tradition, we began with a poem by Lucille Clifton that she allowed us to adapt slightly for the occasion.Our president then gave one of his patented speeches, this one centered on Plato’s Meno. It was exactly what I wanted our students to hear: a full-blown defense of the liberal arts.
Edvard Munch, The Sick Child Imagine the following situation. A couple has been married for decades but now he has contracted a terminal illness and is dying. His wife has always prided herself on being there for him when he needed her, but now she feels helpless. Meanwhile he is scared and angry and is [...]
Chidi Okoye (Nigeria) Spiritual Sunday I refute Berkeley thus, Samuel Johnson famously said. And kicked a rock. Bishop Berkeley was the 18th century idealist philosopher who asked how we know reality is really there if we are dependent upon our senses for perceiving it. Is the rock in existence when we turn our backs? Johnson’s [...]
Flowers for Justin This past Saturday St. Mary’s College held its graduation and, as always, it was a time of good-byes. Good-byes are the theme of today’s post. One good-bye was to poet Lucille Clifton, a former member of the faculty whose poem “blessing the boats (at St. Mary’s)” has become a regular part of [...]
Jackie Robinson steals home Sports Saturday In the memorial service held at St. Mary’s College for Lucille Clifton two weeks ago, I learned that she had three special heroes: Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, and Jackie Robinson. Robinson, of course, was the African American player who broke the baseball color line in 1947, which he [...]
Lucille Clifton Having attended a memorial ceremony for the recently departed poet Lucille Clifton this past Saturday (see yesterday’s post), today I commemorate her by putting some of her poems to good use. Catholic priest molestation has been in the news recently (less the molestation, which tragically occurs in all walks of life, than the [...]
Lucille, daughters, and granddaughter On Saturday night St. Mary’s College held a memorial service for Lucille Clifton, the noted American poet who was also our teacher, colleague and friend for almost twenty years. For me, the most moving part of the ceremony was hearing Lucille’s remaining three daughters reading their favorite poems. Or rather, they chose [...]
Spiritual Sunday/ Easter With this post I am beginning a new series, to appear each Sunday, on literature and spirituality. There is much great literature that speaks directly to religious and spiritual matters, and this gives me an extra opportunity to share some fine poems. At present I am anticipating that these posts will involve [...]
William Wordsworth One day Robinson Crusoe, the next William Blake, the next William Wordsworth. Thanks to four or five classes cancelled due to snow, my Introduction to Literature class is careening through the 18th and early 19th centuries. But we still had time to stop and contemplate Wordsworth’s wondrous lyric “A slumber did my spirit [...]
I have just heard about the death of poet Lucille Clifton and I still can’t wrap by head around the news. Even as I write this sentence, the opening paragraph of a story by James Baldwin (whom Lucille knew well) comes to me: I read about it in the paper, in the subway, on my [...]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Suffering |
Gimli, played by John Rhys-Davies Continuing the Lord of the Rings discussion, here’s an interesting insight passed on to me by my friend Rachel Kranz about my last entry. I was interpreting my adolescent fondness for Gimli the dwarf as an indication that I felt myself a dwarf, hunkered down and plodding. Rachel says that she [...]
A Replica of the Dove I know the last few posts have been tough—race is never easy to talk about, even when doing so makes us feel better than trying to ignore it. To end the week on a lighter note, I feature a poem of grace. It is by Lucille Clifton, St. Mary’s emeritus [...]
Lucille Clifton In yesterday’s post I mentioned that a noted poet once mentioned me in a poem critical of whites. The poet is Lucille Clifton, formerly a colleague at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, now retired. The poem appeared in her book quilting. I’ll quote the poem and then give the backstory: note to [...]
I can’t recommend enough the value of writing your reading history. It will reveal to you sides of yourself you didn’t know you had.
Posted in Angelou (Maya), Blume (Judy), Clifton (Lucille), Dr. Seuss, Morrison (Toni), Silverstein (Shel), Waber (Bernard), Walker (Alice) | Also tagged Alice Walker, Bernard Waber, Bluest Eye, Blume, Book of Light, Cat in the Hat, Clifton, Color Purple, Dr. Seuss, Freckle Juice, Go Ask Alice, I Know Why the Caged Burn Sings, Ira Sleeps Over, Judy Blume, Maya Angelou, Missing Piece, Norman Holland, reading histories, Shel Silverstein, Toni Morrison |
