Poem Post: Lucille Clifton, "Night Vision" and "Here Rests"

[radiantfracture]

Two poems by Lucille Clifton. The first one came up on Instagram and the other I found at the Poetry Foundation.

night vision

the girl fits her body in
to the space between the bed
and the wall. she is a stalk,
exhausted. she will do some
thing with this. she will
surround these bones with flesh.
she will cultivate night vision.
she will train her tongue
to lie still in her mouth and listen.
the girl slips into sleep.
her dream is red and raging.
she will remember
to build something human with it.




here rests

my sister Josephine
born july in '29
and dead these 15 years
who carried a book
on every stroll.

when daddy was dying
she left the streets
and moved back home
to tend him.

her pimp came too
her Diamond Dick
and they would take turns
reading

a bible aloud through the house.
when you poem this
and you will she would say
remember the Book of Job.

happy birthday and hope
to you Josephine
one of the easts
most wanted.

may heaven be filled
with literate men
may they bed you
with respect.


* * * * * * *

I'm a bit unsure of the layout of "night vision." Some examples have it left-justified and some have it centered, but Copper Canyon Press has it left, so we're going with that. That makes more sense to me.

"night vision" makes me think of Akhmatova's great witnessing. I understand that here Clifton is speaking of familial violence, yet she so well distills the emotion that it resonates across all scales of power.

It feels like an expression of resistance to violence with the whole embodied self -- intellectual, spiritual, artistic, physical.

The ferocious -- it's deeper than hope, commitment to life force itself -- of the end of this poem moves me so much: "her dream is red and raging. / she will remember / to build something human with it."

The power and grace of that.

It strikes me that this is a kind of spell or litany, something to be recited in the moment of terror to give strength. The powerful repetition of "she will." The double meaning of "will."

Clifton has such a gift for condensation. "she will do some / thing with this" gives so much more weight than the light, vague "something." It creates an object for the feeling.

"here rests" caught me with its narrative and its expansiveness, the way it refuses to reject anyone, even the pimp. How it loves and honours everyone in their own terms.

I hear a rhythm in the lines, something almost like a nursery rhyme -- specifically "Jack and Jill Went up the Hill" -- that gives the whole poem for me the feeling of a fable.

I'm interested in what the sister means by her reference to the Book of Job.

It seems to me there are such powerful principles in these poems, told in such intimate, personal scenes.

What do you hear?

§rf§

Comments

[lokifan]

Oh wow. Love the first one especially. Kinda reminds me of the Mountain Goats song Up The Wolves.

I'm interested in what the sister means by her reference to the Book of Job.

Yeah, interesting. It might be to do with the question of the Book of Job - why do we suffer? (It kind of ends at an impasse, in my understanding, God and Job being like 'well you don't understand my perspective', which is true in both cases.) Might also be about reading the Book of Job, in which Job's adult children die and he's heartbroken, to remind the dad that he should be happy/grateful to have Josephine there?

[egret]

Isn't Job the one who says "Miserable comforters are ye all." ? Because none of his friends can comfort him in his grief and misery, because none of them will accept his righteousness and the undeservedness of his misfortune, which cannot be called injustice because God is allowing it. Seems like the stuck inability to communicate how one feels or to say anything of use at a hard time, in the poem covered by an almost ritualized Bible reading, because there are no other words than the scripture.

I love Clifton. Good post.

[radiantfracture]

Seems like the stuck inability to communicate how one feels or to say anything of use at a hard time, in the poem covered by an almost ritualized Bible reading, because there are no other words than the scripture

That makes sense, and in the poems of Clifton's I've been reading she does use scripture as a vehicle of communication throughout.

I think I'd have to change my reading of the poem a bit to accommodate that understanding of the reference to Job -- right now I read the speaker's regard of the sister as quite tender, ironic but not cynical, recognizing a gesture of love in unlikely garb.

I wonder if it could be a kind of defiance on the part of the sister, or the poem, to say "none of us deserve this suffering."

[egret]

I think you’re right, but I also think there is defiance/confrontation in the sister saying “when you poem this.” As if the sister is saying “you will presume to speak for us, you can hold (a part of) yourself as an aloof artist, you with your college and me with my pimp are not the same.” It’s like a refusal Of objectification which is really quite brilliantly conveyed.