SOURCE: White, Mark Bernard. “Sharing the Living Light: Rhetorical, Poetic, and Social Identity in Lucille Clifton.” CLA Journal 40, no. 3 (March 1997): 288-304.

In the following essay, White observes how Clifton's poetry can function as a rhetorical discourse on African-American identity.

And I could tell you about things we been through, some awful ones, some wonderful, but I know that the things that make us are more than that, our lives are more than the days in them, our lives are our line and we go on.

—Lucille Clifton, Generations

That Lucille Clifton is one of the most engaging, gifted, and significant of contemporary poets is a critical evaluation more and more commonly held. Witness her inclusion in numerous anthologies, her nomination for the Pulitzer Prize, and her praises sung more frequently now than ever. Likewise, it is generally recognized that her poems offer an edifying personal wisdom, born of...