SOURCE: Anaporte-Easton, Jean. “Healing Our Wounds: The Direction of Difference in the Poetry of Lucille Clifton and Judith Johnson.” Mid-American Review 14, no. 2 (1994): 78-82.

In the following essay, Anaporte-Easton examines the thematic focus on Christianity and African-American culture in the poetry of Clifton and Judith Johnson.

The distinctive quality of Clifton's voice comes from her ability to ground her art in an imagery of the body and physical reality. Through the Mary poems, Clifton re-inscribes Christianity with the sacred wisdom of women's physical and emotional experience just as she expands the imagery of Judaism and Christianity to suggest African-American as well as white culture. Prior to the Mary poems in a series called “some jesus,” Clifton transposes details of Christian mythology associated with white culture into the physical terms of Black culture: Collard greens, beets, and turnips replace palm leaves on the path of the triumphal entry; Moses is...