Homage to My Hips by Lucille Clifton
Homage to My Hips
Lucille Cliftonthese hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don’t fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don’t like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top
MARGINALIA
Amen.
KEEP READING
SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in Good Woman by Lucille Clifton, published by BOA Editions Ltd., 1987. (Available on: Amazon • Bookshop)
DESCRIPTION
“Finalist for the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry A landmark collection by one of America’s major black poets, Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980 includes all of Lucille Clifton’s first four published collections of extraordinary vibrant poetry—Good Times, Good News About the Earth, An Ordinary Woman, and Two-Headed Woman—as well as her haunting prose memoir, Generations.” (Source)
ABOUT LUCILLE CLIFTON
Lucille Clifton was born in Depew, New York, on June 27, 1936. Her first book of poems, Good Times (Random House, 1969), was rated one of the best books of the year by the New York Times. Clifton’s honors include an Emmy Award from the American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, a Lannan Literary Award, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Shelley Memorial Award, the YM-YWHA Poetry Center Discovery Award, and the 2007 Ruth Lilly Prize. Lucille Clifton died… (more)
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ENDNOTES
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