Lucille Clifton — song at midnight

Poetry Unbound

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4.9 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2020

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

In strength and defiance, Lucille Clifton celebrates her Black body and her survival. When have you said or heard words like this? Calling herself “both nonwhite and woman,” Lucille Clifton glories in her shape and fact of her life in these two poems. She invites the reader to witness everything she's lived through, and to celebrate the flourishing life that she has created in spite of everything that has tried to kill her.

Transcript

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0:00.0	My name is Podrigotumma and poetry is a fairly solitary art while it can sometimes get
0:13.0	shared in books or in readings. Mostly poems are written by a person alone with a computer
0:19.0	or with a pen or a pencil. And that can be lonely but also can be a magnificent way to
0:25.2	find a language that suits yourself in those alone hours, maybe in the morning, maybe
0:29.6	late at night. But in so doing you can find a language for yourself that can help you survive.
0:39.1	Song at Midnight by Lucille Clifton. This poem has an epigraph at the beginning. Do not send me out
0:46.3	to among strangers from Sonya Sanchez. Brothers, this big woman carries much sweetness in the folds
0:56.3	of her flesh. Her hair is white with wonderful. She is rounder than the moon and far more faithful.
1:06.9	Brothers, who will not hold her? Who will find her beautiful if you do not?
1:16.9	Won't you celebrate with me what I have shaped into a kind of life? I had no model.
1:26.1	Born in Babylon, both non-white and woman, what did I see to be except myself?
1:35.5	I made it up here on this bridge between Starschein and Clay. My one hand holding tight my other hand.
1:46.6	Come celebrate with me that every day something has tried to kill me and has failed.
2:01.8	Lucille Clifton was on my list for this season. In fact, she's probably on my list for every season.
2:08.6	Her work is extraordinary. She has such an interesting style. She doesn't use any capital letters.
2:13.6	Her poems are always short and so distilled. They're beautiful. They know what they're doing.
2:21.8	They are so intelligent and clear. They don't get in their way. They are filled with their own
2:28.0	music, which is a music of power and precision. This poem is a poem of two halves, really. Sometimes
2:34.8	they're used separately. The first one is called Song at Midnight. The second one is on title,
2:38.6	but it comes right after it. Sometimes they're seen as two halves of one poem and all the
2:42.4	times seem to be operates separately. Lucille Clifton was in her late 50s when this poem was
2:47.2	published in the Book of Light in 1992. The epigraph that she uses from Sonia Sanchez is from a poem
	...

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