synecdoche for sailors for two reasons: first, sai-
lors perform most of their work with their hands,
and second, when a captain calls for all hands to
come on deck, there is work to be done. If the
captain wanted the sailors to be on the lookout
for an enemy vessel, on the other hand, he or she
might instead call out, ‘‘All eyes to starboard!’’
A bad or unclear synecdoche would be if the
captain called out, ‘‘All elbows down below!’’
The appropriateness of the synecdoche contrib-
utes to the clarity of the figure of speech.
Mark Bernard White, in an article in the
CLA Journal, asserts that Clifton’s use of hips
in ‘‘homage to my hips’’ is a form of synecdoche.
He writes, ‘‘Hips become a synecdoche, even a
theme or motif, in Clifton, to suggest her own
womanliness, the power of the feminine form,
and especially to celebrate the aesthetics of black
women’s bodies.’’ The rightness of White’s state-
ment is obvious on reflection. When Clifton
argues that her hips are free and do not belong
to anyone else, she of course also means that her
whole body is free. It would be a logical impos-
sibility for it to be otherwise. In addition, the
synecdoche is clear for the two important rea-
sons noted above: first, hips are an essential part
of a woman’s body, and second, hips are directly
related to the topic under discussion, a woman’s
beauty and sense of self. Clifton, therefore, uses
the literary device of synecdoche to provide a
concrete visual image in the form of her hips to
stand in for the abstraction of the free female
body.
Minimalism
Minimalism is a movement in visual, architec-
tural, and literary arts characterized by a striving
to reach the essence of an idea with a minimum
of words or detail. In minimalist literature, each
word resonates with significance, such that only
a few words can carry the theme. Well-known
minimalist writers include Raymond Carver and
Anne Beattie. An examination of Clifton’s
poetry as well reveals this aesthetic function.
Alicia Ostriker, in theAmerican Poetry Review,
comments on why this is such an effective tech-
nique for Clifton: ‘‘The work of a minimalist
artist like Clifton makes empty space resonate.
A spacious silence is not mere absence of noise,
but locates us as it were on a cosmic stage.’’ That
is, the carving away of words to reveal the
essence of a poem results in space in which the
poem can move, in much the same way that
Clifton revels in space for her hips. Writing in
Black Women Writers (1950–1980): A Critical
Evaluation, Haki Madhubuti likewise praises
Clifton for being ‘‘an economist with words’’
who ‘‘is effective because, despite consciously
limiting her vocabulary, she has defined her
audience....She is communicating ideas and
concepts.’’ Thus, Clifton’s minimalist style
focuses attention on her ideas and concepts
rather than on a large or academic vocabulary.
By using language common among her audi-
ence, she writes poetry that speaks directly to
those she wishes to address.Historical Context
Civil Rights and the Black Power
Movement
Clifton was born in 1936, a time when African
Americans were excluded from many of the
amenities of American life. Particularly in the
southern states, African Americans were legally
segregated into their own schools, neighbor-
hoods, and recreational facilities. So-called Jim
Crow laws established that segregation was legal
so long as facilities were separate but equal.
Conditions, however, were scarcely ever equal,
and generations of young African Americans
struggled with inferior schools and education.
The return of African American soldiers
from World War II in 1945 began a decades-
long struggle to achieve civil rights for African
American citizens. In 1954, while Clifton was a
student at Howard University, in Washington,
D.C., the U.S. Supreme Court ruled inBrown v.
Board of Educationthat it was the right of Afri-
can American children to attend school with all
other children. Over the next few years, civil
disorder broke out as schools began the long
process of desegregation.
Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s,
African Americans and their white allies worked
tirelessly to establish equal rights for all citizens.
Led by leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr., civil rights activists engaged in voter registra-
tion drives and civil disobedience, sometimes at
the cost of their own safety. In spite of the suc-
cesses the civil rights leaders achieved in securing
legal civil rights, discrimination in many forms
continued to plague the country.
By 1966, the tenor of the civil rights move-
ment began to change. Groups of militant Afri-
can Americans, such as the Black Panthers andhomage to my hips