Blessing the Boats

Lucille Clifton’s work spans over 50 years in which she published, won awards, taught and produced in the public eye. She was influenced by and was associated with several literary movements including the Harlem Renaissance, whose most prominent figure, Langston Hughes “discovered” Clifton. She was also associated with The Black Arts Movement and Post-Confessional traditions. Her themes include issues of race, history, feminism, and spirituality. She was deeply influenced by her faith and her spiritual practice as a “two-headed woman”, an African term for a person who has contact with the spirit world, which she writes about in her book of that same name.

Clifton’s work was originally discovered by Langston Hughes who was a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes included some of Clifton’s earliest works in his anthology The Poetry of the Negro. The Harlem Renaissance was not necessarily a cohesive movement with unifying themes. It was, rather, a time in history in which many African American writers and artists rose to prominence. These included writers and artists such as Hubert Harrison, Anne Spencer, Fenton Johnson, and Zora Neale Hurston.

In her review of Blessing the Boats, Louise McKee writes “Clifton's work hearkens back to the days of the Black Arts Movement and sheds light on the new Black aesthetic.