[With "Generations" Lucille Clifton has] produced a short but eloquent eulogy of her parents. As with most elegists, her purpose is perpetuation and celebration, not judgment. There is no attempt to see either parent whole; no attempt at the recovery of history not witnessed by or told to the author. There is no sustained chronological narrative. Instead, clusters of brief anecdote gather round two poles, the deaths of father and mother….

First, her father…. His daughter's portrait is of a man who worked in a steel mill for 30 years, who took pride in an orally transmitted history of strong female ancestors, who spent his life strengthening female descendants of his own by leaning hard on two wives, several mistresses and daughters, and who is remembered by one of them at least not as callous and self-serving but as numinous with grace, generosity and power….

His second wife, Thelma...