Mercy

by Lucille Clifton

Lucille Clifton’s poetry carries her deep concerns for the world’s children, the stratification of American society, those people lost or forgotten amid the crushing race of Western materialism and technology. In turns sad, troubled and angry, her voice has always been one of great empathy, knowing, as she says, “the only mercy is memory.” In this, her 12th book of poetry, the National Book Award-winner speaks to the tenuous relationship between mothers and daughters, the debilitating power of cancer, the open wound of racial prejudice, the redemptive gift of story-telling. “September Song,” a sequence of seven poems, featured on National Public Radio, presents a modern-day Orpheus who, through her grief, attempts to heart-intelligently respond to the events of September 11th. The last sequence of poems—a tightly-woven fabric of caveats and prayers—was initially written in the 1970s, then revised and reshaped in the last few years. Lucille Clifton is an award-winning poet, fiction writer and author of children’s books. Her most recent poetry book, Blessing the New and Selected Poems 1969–1999 (BOA), won the 2000 National Book Award for Poetry. Two of Clifton’s BOA poetry collections, Good Poems and a Memoir 1969–1980 and New Poems , were chosen as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in 1988, while Clifton’s The Terrible Stories (BOA) was a finalist for the 1996 National Book Award. Clifton has received fellowships from the NEA, an Emmy Award from the American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Shelley Memorial Prize and the Charity Randall Citation. She is a Distinguished Professor of Humanities as St. Mary’s College in Maryland. She was appointed a Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and elected as Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 1999. She lives in Columbia, MD.

Genres: Poetry, Adult, African American, Womens, Grief, Fiction

79 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2004

About the author

Lucille Clifton was an American poet, writer, and educator from New York. Common topics in her poetry include the celebration of her African American heritage, and feminist themes, with particular emphasis on the female body.

She was the first person in her family to finish high school and attend college. She started Howard University on scholarship as a drama major but lost the scholarship two years later.

Thus began her writing career.

Good Times, her first book of poems, was published in 1969. She has since been nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and has been honored as Maryland's Poet Laureate.

Ms. Clifton's foray into writing for children began with Some of the Days of Everett Anderson, published in 1970.

In 1976, Generations: A Memoir was published. In 2000, she won the National Book Award for Poetry, for her work "Poems Seven".

From 1985 to 1989, Clifton was a professor of literature and creative writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She was Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary's College of Maryland. From 1995 to 1999, she was a visiting professor at Columbia University. In 2006, she was a fellow at Dartmouth College.

Clifton received the Robert Frost Medal for lifetime achievement posthumously, from the Poetry Society of America.

Reviews

[hope h. · Rating 5 out of 5]

children

they are right, the poet mother
carries her wolf in her heart,
wailing at pain yet suckling it like
romulus and remus. this now.
how will i forgive myself
for trying to bear the weight of this
and trying to bear the weight also
of writing the poem
about this?

[also: mulberry fields, the river between us, and powell.]

[William Lawrence · Rating 2 out of 5]

Glimmers of great thoughts, but these poems just weren't what I expected for an award winning poet & collection. Not sure what these award committees are looking at.

[Ashly Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though I am by no means a Clifton master, I feel like reading this book kind of reminded me why I liked her so much before I started reading more of her work and liking her a little less. This collection has a greater variety of pieces in content, though the themes remain par for the course.

I liked the beginning section of this book the best as I got to see a slightly different side of Clifton in the dead mom poems, and also I just love dead mom anythings but especially poems haha.

Overall I enjoyed this and am glad I picked it up!

[Gus · Rating 5 out of 5]

“there is a star/ more distant/ than eden/ something there/ is even now/ preparing”

[Courtney Ferriter · Rating 5 out of 5]

** 4.5 stars **

The poems in this collection are deceptively simple in language and form but have important things to say about the stories we tell ourselves and others. My favorite is the sequence "September Song: A Poem in 7 Days," which is about September 11, 2001 in the U.S.

[Regine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Spare, often bleak, Clifton has the gift of seeing “the sharp wing of things.” In the first sections, there were moments of eerie beauty and of deep pain, but she lost me with the spirit poems that conclude the work.

[Patch · Rating 5 out of 5]

only complaint is it was too short. my favorite poems were April (personal significance because my birthday is also in april), and beginning of message. the poem with the book's title hit me like a rock to the skull.

[Julianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5🤘

[Poppy O’Connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

W o w

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would give this book 4 stars if it consisted only of the first two-thirds. I would give it 1 or 2 if it were shortened to the last third.

The last third, "the message from the Ones (received in the late 70s)," is tiresomely oracular. There's little imagery, just pronouncements (e.g., "the air / you have polluted / you will breathe // the waters / you have poisoned / you will drink // when you come again / and you will come again").

Much more beautiful is "wind on the st. marys river," which pictures "Jeremiah Fanny Lou Geronimo" and other ancestors approaching the shore, "the nap of their silver hair whipping . . . white caps on the water."

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

"you have placed yourselves
in peril
not by your superior sword
but by your insignificant
quarrels with life"

—from "the message from The Ones"

A really lovely collection—these are hard-hitting and strange in places, not terribly similar to other Clifton I've read. I liked this an awful lot.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lucille Clifton’s poems are such a marvel—as someone who can never get where I’m speaking towards ver quickly, I will never stop admiring how much she can do with so few words. In “in the mirror,” the word that the tortured subject inhabits is only four letters but those letters contain whole worlds. Her sequence about September 11th is jaw dropping. Her poems in memory of her mother, heartbreaking.

oh antic God
return to me
my mother in her thirties

…

I am almost the dead woman’s age times two.

I can barely recall her song
the scent of her hands
though her wild hair scratches my dreams
at night. return to me, oh Lord of then
and now, my mother’s calling,
her young voice humming my name. (“last words” second poem, p. 15)

And she will throw rhymes in, you may be distracted trying to piece everything together that you miss the music:

(mama)

i am unforming
out of flesh

into the rubble
of the ground

there will be
new scars new tests

new “Mamas”
coming around (“last words”).

When Clifton uses so few words, it’s left to you to do the work, to think and elaborate and expand, and I just feel like she’s perpetually teaching us how to walk, speak, and read. You’ll be better for having read her.

[Joaquin Reyes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lucille Clifton’s Mercy is an enigmatic compilation of poems that gives a piercing view of the realities of what it means to be born into unforgiving circumstances. She captures this human experience precisely with her dynamic poetry. In a world that is wrought with injustice and apathy, Lucille Clifton portrays the themes of mercy and love as antidotes to these modern human sicknesses.

A sample from the collection:

the gift

There was a woman who hit her head
And ever after she could see the sharp
Wing of things blues and greens
Radiating from the body of her sister
Her mother her friends when she felt

In her eyes the yellow sting
Of her mothers dying she trembled
But did not speak her bent brain
Stilled her tongue so that her life
Became flash after flash of silence

Bright as flame she is gone now
Her head knocked again against a door
That opened for her only
I saw her last in a plain box smiling
Behind her sewn eyes there were hints
Of purple and crimson and gold

[Nadine in NY Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my favorite of her collections.

One of the few poems that really caught my attention:

the river between us
in the river that your father fished
my father was baptized. it was
their hunger that defined them,

one, a man who knew he could
feed himself if it all came down,
the other a man who knew he needed help.

this is about more than color. it is
about how we learn to see ourselves.
it is about geography and memory.

it is about being poor people
in america. it is about my father
and yours and you and me and
the river that is between us.

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the opening poem "the gift," it was clear to me that I was reading a master. Much of this collection bowled me over with its ability to put the big thoughts in the palm of my hands. The section "september song a poem in seven days" may not click but tackling 9/11 is no easy task. Outside of that sequence, however, "Mercy" generally does what I like poetry to do: present a personal world view or an applicable philosophy in vividly crafted verse. I'll definitely be seeking out more of Clifton's work.

[tori gm · Rating 5 out of 5]

i love you, lucille. endless thank yous forever and ever.

in 'mercy' i am reminded we must invest in black success and happiness. honor shared human condition. love each other mercifully and mercilessly. which is also to invest in repairing our planet. stay humble and thankful.

some highlights:

poems-
mulberry fields, cancer, here rests, monday sundown 9/17/01, 'in the geometry/ of knowing'

quotes-
"what is not lost/
is paradise"

"pay attention to/
what sits inside yourself/
and watches you"

[Sanjuro · Rating 3 out of 5]

I resonated most with the second section of the book, called "stories." "the river between us" was my favorite poem in the book, followed by a few others from that section. I've been reading through Clifton's works, and the tone, style, and themes of this book are essentially the same as any other. Hew work never really evolved. But in each collection there are a few poems whose language resonates with me.

[Meher · Rating 5 out of 5]

"the patience
of the universe
is not without
an end

so might it
slowly
turn its back

so might it
slowly
walk away

leaving you alone
in the world you leave
your children."

While instagram poets are fighting over the proprietorship of stark, minimalist poetry, Lucille Clifton did it better and more evocatively than anyone else almost 30 years earlier. What a giant among writers!

[Alice · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think poetry is one of the hardest things to write, and yet Lucille Clifton makes it look so easy. I loved the continuous stories running through this collection, particularly the poems following 9/11. A wonderful collection on the surface, but these poems truly are something special when you start to dig a bit deeper.

[Hollis · Rating 3 out of 5]

from "[surely i am able to write poems]":

surely but whenever i begin
"the trees wave their knotted branches
and . . ." why
is there under that poem always
an other poem?

remains one of Clifton's most ingenious passages.

[Terra Oliveira · Rating 5 out of 5]

“the angels have no wings
they come to you wearing
their own clothes

they have learned to love you
and will keep coming

unless you insist on wings”

— Lucille Clifton, from “Mercy”

“you are not
your brothers keeper
you are
your brother”

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

September Song broke my heart

[Esther O. Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Especially loved the messages from the ancestors portion, reminds me of Earthseed verses.

[Lindsey Haffner · Rating 5 out of 5]

yes yes yes read this read anything by Lucille Clifton she is queen

[Kesi Augustine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Christ consciousness embodied. So ahead of her time. I'm grateful to have read this and hope to only be able to better understand it again and again.

[Annagrace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lucille Clifton. Why we don’t teach her in middle schools all over our country I will never understand.

[atito · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was fantastic

[Aliff Awan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sajak-sajak Lucille sangat mudah dan ia bijak.

[andré crombie · Rating 3 out of 5]

“3 thursday 9/13/01

the firemen
ascend
like jacobs ladder
into the mouth of
history”

[Jonathan Hiskes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful, taut, compressed, deceptively simple poems about being alive in America.