Do be blind to one’s privileges is to live in a world of shadows and phantoms, as Ralph Ellison and Lucille Clifton both make clear. Life if much richer if we identify our blindnesses and engage with people as three-dimensional beings.
Tag Archives: Lucille Clifton
We Benefit When We Check Our Privilege
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "wishes for sons", Invisible Man, racism, Ralph Ellison, white privilege Comments closed
The New Moon, A Prayer Opening to Faith
In a powerful Advent poem, David Whyte compares waning faith with the waning moon. The poem reminds me of poems by John Keats and Lucille Clifton.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Bright Star", "man who killed the bear", Advent, David Whyte, Faith, John Keats Comments closed
Massacring the Environment Dakota Style
With a North Dakota winter bearing down on those protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline, I see a convergence of images that also show up in Lucille Clifton’s poem “the killing of the trees”: environmental degradation, oppression of Native Americans, and frozen bodies.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "killing of the trees", clean water, Dakota Access Pipeline, Lakota Sious, Standing Rock Sioux Comments closed
John the Baptist: his mouth be true as time
In Lucille Clifton’s version of John the Baptist, he is a black minister preaching the social gospel.
On 9/11, Firemen Ascended Jacob’s Ladder
Lucille Clifton’s seven 9/11 poems, written in the days following the attacks, use religious imagery to find hope.
Welcome Class of 2020 (and Others)
A letter to incoming college students, with a tip of the hat to Montaigne, Williams Wordsworth, and Lucille Clifton.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Tintern Abbey" entering students, academe, College, Liberal arts education, Michel de Montaigne, William Wordsworth Comments closed
Our Stoned Girls and Boys
As America undergoes a major opioid epidemic, it is worth looking back at two Lucille Clifton poems about how drugs were blighting the lives of young black men and women in the early 1990s.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "memo", "white lady", addiction, cocaine, heroin, opioid epidemic Comments closed
On Walls: A Letter to the Incoming Class
Talk about walls and keep people out of America is beginning to seep down to high schools and colleges. It is therefore important that students understand how walls operate. Daniel Defoe and Lucille Clifton has some useful insights into how walls both make us safe and entrap us.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "note to self", "wishes for sons", Daniel Defoe, Donald Trump, walls Comments closed
Homer’s Warning about Revenge Killings
What will it take to bring peace between police and black communities? Homer has a vision of such a truce at the end of “The Odyssey” but it may not be realistic.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "the meeting after the savior gone 4/4/68", Alton Sterling, Beowulf, Black Lives Matter, Ceremony, Dallas police killings, Grendel's mother, Homer, Leslie Marmon Silko, Odyssey, Philando Castille, race war Comments closed
