SOURCE: "Lucille Clifton: A Changing Voice for Changing Times," in Coming to Light: American Women Poets in the Twentieth Century, edited by Diane Wood Middlebrook and Marilyn Yalom, The University of Michigan Press, 1985, pp. 214-22

Here, Rushing examines Clifton's relationship to the Black Arts Movement and comments on Clifton's poetic representation of women.

Like all the other contemporary African-American women poets, Clifton was deeply affected by the Black Arts movement of the sixties and seventies. Although subsequent experiences like the women's movement and her own heightened religious consciousness have also left their imprint on her, we must consider that soul-changing crusade the crucible which most searingly shaped her art.

A concomitant of the separatist Black Power campaign, the Black Arts movement enlisted such cultural workers as musicians, visual artists, and writers to addressthe masses of African-Americans about the liberation struggles which confronted them. Propelled by slogans like "I'm...