Lucille Clifton often writes at the intersection of personal past and history, attempting to recover what is personal about even large-scale historical events. In particular, she is concerned with speaking for those who have not had a voice in shaping official history, as in "at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, south carolina, 1989":
among the rocks
at walnut grove
your silence drumming
in my bones,
tell me your names.
She looks beyond the "inventory lists" that enumerate the property belonging to the plantation. Historical documents and historical narratives are windows into lived experience, often figured in terms of the body or its labor. For Clifton, the reading of these documents is not just a means to intellectually understand the past, but to physically hear and feel the past in order to help shape our lives in the present.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment