September Suite

The poems in “September Suite” are unmetered and in free verse. They take various forms, although one adheres to a formal convention. Any regularity that appears early on in an individual poem is tweaked by the end of the poem, be that with line lengths, stanza lengths, and spacing. Caesuras peppered through “Tuesday 9/11/01” leave empty holes in a poem with otherwise standard line and stanza lengths. The longest line, Line 6 of “Saturday 9/15/01,” is immediately followed by the shortest. By breaking and rebreaking form, Clifton demonstrates the distress of her speaker.

Enjambment also emphasizes words and phrases within the speaker’s sentences by directing the reader’s attention. Consider this passage in “Wednesday 9/12/01”:

this is not the time

i think

to note the terrorist

inside (Lines 1-4).

Isolating “I think” on its own line gives the sentence a halting, choppy quality. Similarly, isolating “inside” from the word “terrorists” emphasizes that Clifton is talking about a different sort of terrorist in this poem, and this terrorist is not foreign.

Clifton has been praised for writing “physically small poems with profound inner worlds” (“Lucille Clifton.” Poetry Foundation). These small poems often use small words with just a few syllables.