In the poem, Homage to My Hips, Lucille Clifton creates unique images of freedom and free fill, liberation, and self-identity. The poem creates excitement and aesthetic pleasure in a participatory audience doing tedious or even painfully laborious work. Thesis A central strand in this poem is the stress on the expressive and emotional side achieved through stylistic devices and vivid images of ‘hips.’
The main theme of the poem is freedom as a measure of social justice. It seems that personal democracy rests upon individual freedom and rights. The narrator admires the main character and his feeling of liberation: ‘they need space to / move around in” (Clifton). The poet is now seen as the vehicle for spontaneous emotion, which bubbles up through him in the form of a poem. The description of ‘hips’ in terms of passion, emotion, ‘inspiration,’ and expressiveness add emotional tension and appeal (Reiser 41). The speaker’s tone reveals liberation and personal identity. It is possible to assume that the speaker is a black woman who has “never been enslaved” (Clifton).
The tone of the poem reflects cultural assumptions and traditions. The tone of a poem is significant and is used as a structuring device in the poem. Repetition is another deliberate poetic device. “These hips are mighty hips/ these hips are magic hips” (Clifton). Diction unveils the low-class location of the speaker and slang. Thus, it adds colorful images and unique symbols: “magic hips,” “put a spell on a man.”
A true woman is essentially spontaneous, artistic, and natural. In this short poem, the quintessence of emotional expression and natural spontaneity is found in ‘primitive’ language and culture. Its language originates in primeval expressions of emotion, which are by nature expressed in rhythmic and figurative form. Further, ‘unlettered’ folk, as well as far-off ‘primitive’ peoples, are thought to represent the essence of the natural and instinctive poetic expression so valued by readers. The rhyme scheme is simply based on the repletion of ‘they’ and ‘want to.’ Clifton writes: “they go where they want to go / they do what they want to do” (Clifton).
These various meters give structure to the verse in which they occur by a type of verbal utterance based on sound patterning. But it is not only through rhythmic repetition that this structuring can take place; it is also produced by alternative means like alliteration, assonance, or various types of parallelism. These stylistic devices underline the main idea of freedom and liberation highlighted by the speaker: “they don’t fit into little/petty places. these hips / are free hips” (Clifton).
Repetition is a basic feature of such compositions. She points to the constant repetitions of words, phrases, situations, and ideas and to the use of repeated introductory phrases, commonplaces, and linking passages. Contrast between tones at the ends of two consecutive rhythm segments is also used to make a strong impression on the reader (Reiser 54).
In sum, using unique images and stylistic devices, the author creates an atmosphere of freedom and liberation reflected through the character of an African-American woman. This general question of ‘repetition’ leads to the issue of structure in the larger sense influences the internal style of a poem. These devices make it easier for the audience to grasp what has been said and give the speaker confidence that it has understood the message she is trying to communicate.
Works Cited
- Clifton, L. Homage to My Hips. N.d. Web.
- Reiser, M Analysis of Poetic Thinking Wayne State Univ Pr, 1969.