Lucille Clifton is a widely celebrated and respected poet, having written many poetry collections and children’s books—some of which were nominated and won awards including the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. She was born in 1936 and wrote her work through tumultuous times such as the Vietnam War and Civil Rights Movement while also […]
Author Archive | Jenny Layman
Lucille Clifton’s Gentle Urgings to Celebrate
Lucille Clifton 1936-2010 In Joyce Johnson’s journal article, “The Theme of Celebration in Lucille Clifton’s poetry,” Johnson highlights Clifton’s accomplishments, but focuses on how she maintained a celebratory tone in her works even while writing about some of the tough experiences of Black life. Clifton’s “vision is not marred by sentimentality, for she […]
Close Reading of “This Line”, sort of
Close Reading of “This Line”, sort of This week’s reading and poetry really did not come into focus for me until I read Lyn Hejinian’ Against Closure. She articulated perfectly how language fills the void in a person’s mind that is the void of unknowing. We don’t know anything until we can articulate it and […]
Summer Storm
Close Reading–Summer Storm Dana Gioia’s Summer Storm, published in 2001, is a poem about two people who met at a wedding and connected briefly on a patio during a storm, but never spoke again. The connection impacted the narrator so deeply that despite twenty years having passed, the memory of the connection still lingers loudly […]
Journal response to The Social Background of the Black Arts Movement
In the article, “The Social Background of the Black Arts Movement,” author Larry Neal, co-editor of Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing with Amiri Baraka, explores what was happening in society surrounding the Black Arts Movement. He begins by noting that Philadelphia riots, Harlem riots, and the Bay of Pigs. Civil Rights Movement was […]
Anne Sexton, “The Room of my Life”
Anne Sexton’s The Room of my Life Anne Sexton (1928-1974) was a profoundly accomplished poet who was categorized as a part of the Confessional Poets, who wrote raw revelations about topics thought to be private or unspeakable. Her poetry reflects perhaps, her tumultuous mental health, but certainly her perception of […]
Creative response to O’Hara’s “A Step Away from Them”
I was quickly interested in Frank O’Hara’s structure of “A Step Away from Them” While I am not a poet, and do not actually read much poetry, this was fun to try to imitate and I enjoyed the experience. A STEP AWAY FROM REAL It’s my one free hour, so I go for […]
Relearning Denise Levertov’s Alphabet: War, Flesh, and the Intimacy of Otherness
Denise Levertov (1923-1997) Lisa Narbeshuber looks into the work of Denise Levertov in her article, “Relearning Denise Levertov’s Alphabet: War, Flesh, and the Intimacy of Otherness” in which she delves into Levertov’s Vietnam-era poetry and the way the poet’s cultural writing “shares a certain universality of flesh, and it can be used to […]
The Quarrel
A Close Reading of Diane di Prima’s “The Quarrel” Diane di Prima’s “The Quarrel” is seemingly about a woman who is angry with her artist husband/partner/Mark as he draws “Brad who was asleep on the bed” while she has both an external and internal dialogue about her feelings of being ignored and overworked. She […]