Lucille Clifton

The other day, I was listening to an interview that Curtis Fox from the Poetry Foundation did with the now-deceased poet Lucille Clifton. During the interview, Ms. Clifton read one of her poems, "homage to my hips." After she read, Mr. Fox mentioned that the poem had been written during the 1970s and asked her if it was a response to feminism.

Her answer? A laugh and "No, it was in response to my big hips!"

:)

Poets of the world, if we all smile a little more, maybe readers won't be afraid to remember that poetry touches on everything human!

Link: Lucille Clifton

A Sonnet for Superman -- The Rejected Version

A while back, I made a post about how I sometimes find it good to write just for the sake of writing, even if the results come out flawed. The poem below is another product of one of those sessions. It could've been good, but the familiar tone that the poem starts out with gets abandoned halfway through, the idea of something put out into the world coming back to you gets muddled, and the conclusion in the last line seems to come too suddenly, without being properly developed. And yet, I can't totally throw the poem away because, dude, I wrote something in sonnet form!

What could I do with this version? I thought. And then it occurred to me: I have a blog! And so....

“A Better Alter Ego for Superman”

Kal-El's disguise was pure and utter crap.
I'm sure you've thought so, too. Those glasses? Right.
Can't you just see them broken in a fight
By Supes himself the second that a slap
Loosed from his mighty hand came back and cracked
The lenses? With good will, that's how it goes.
In tempered fists or gilded words, it flows
Like water, easy. Wherever the pact
May bring it, though, we lack a guarantee:
The hands we'd touch with it could be too hard
To hold it. Yes, the Man of Steel might be
Too kind and resolute for us, so marred
And doubtful. Instead, throw the cape on me.
I'm here, I'm human, I'm perfectly scarred.