that was. I didn’t know what was meant. One
day, I got a letter from Hoyt Fuller who was
editingNegro Digest(you know it latter [sic]
becameBlack World). He told me that he was
grateful that when I mention when I was first
published, I always said it was inNegro Digest.
He said some people forget. [Laughter] I didn’t
forget. I think that allowed there to be a gate
through which I could come, certainly, though I
was a little older than some. But people have a
tendency, I think, to believe that if you don’t say
‘‘black’’ in every other line, you must be some-
how not wishing to be part of Black. But as
Gwendolyn Brooks has said, ‘‘Every time I
walk out of my house, it is a political decision.’’
And I think that’s true.
What was the effect of the Black Arts Move-
ment on our literature? Given the above, how
can we know? What I do understand is that it is
better to speak our stories than to keep silence. It
is better to try and define ourselves than to
remain defined by others. A better question
might be this: What was the effect of the move-
ment on our lives? There is a tendency in our
literature, in the American tongue, to write with
an eye on how the critics and intellectuals receive
us. Are we writing for them? Poetry is a human
art. It is about being human, whatever gender or
color or class. My cousins have never heard of
any movements much. Do we not write for them
also?
ROWELL:Good Times,your first book of
poems, was published in 1969, and others fol-
lowed.Good Woman: New and Selected Poems
was published in 1987.The Terrible Storiesfol-
lowed in 1997. Why did you omitTen Oxherding
Pictures: A Meditationfrom the list of your vol-
umes of poems?
CLIFTON: Ten Oxherding Pictures—because
it’s a different kind of thing.Ten Oxherding
Pictures is twelve poems. It was privately
printedinSantaCruz,California. It’s based
on a series of pictures done as a Buddhist Med-
itation aid in the 12th century. I’ve always had a
kind of—well, I say I’m not religious—I’ve
always had a spiritual dimension in my life.
When I saw the names of the pictures, I had
been reading something about children’s books,
and this one author had these pictures in her
house. The last one of the pictures is called
‘‘Entering the City with Bliss Bestowing
Hands.’’ When I heard that, something just
sparked in me, and I quickly wrote, just based
on the caption of these pictures—which I had
not seen at the time—poems about this spiritual
search. The ox is metaphorized as the spiritual
goal. That was different. So I didn’t think it’d fit
in the regular bibliography. The book is hand-
made of handpaper and a leather binding. It is
an expensive book, and it’s still around. It must
cost a lot now, quite a lot.
ROWELL: What do you think of Ten
Oxherding Pictures? I like it very much. It is an
extraordinary text.
CLIFTON:I like it. As I said, it’s just differ-
ent from most of my books. But I like it. It’s part
of who I am. I do a lot of things with the Chris-
tian Bible people, Biblical things, which I know
well. But I’ve always had a kind sixth sense—
especially when somebody talks about hands.
Yes, a sixth sense—if you want to call it that—
that deals with spirituality and with the sacred.
These are poems that came from that part of me.
But remember that it’s not either/or for me.
That’s part of who I am too. I am one who can
feel the sacred, sometimes, and the one who’s
profane at other times—[Laughter] I like Bach.
Everybody knows I like Bach a lot—and I also
think that Levi Stubbs and the Four Tops
is really fabulous. I also love Aretha [Franklin].
I am that kind of person: complex, like other
people. I have some other poems that deal with
the sacred, not with religion but with the sacred.
Some have not been published.
ROWELL: Will you talk about your new
work, that which followsThe Terrible Stories?
I heard you read some of your new poems last
January [1998] at Xavier University in New
Orleans. LikeTen Oxherding Pictures,the new
work you read there was different from the work
inGood Woman.I heard a different Lucille Clif-
ton in them.
CLIFTON:Well, I think that people have
said these poems seem darker, but you know,
I’ve had cancer, I’ve had kidney failure, I’ve
been on dialysis, I had a kidney transplant. I’ve
had many losses, and in those new poems I’m
exploring some of the more obviously terrible
things. I also feel a kind of urgency in our cul-
ture, in the United States, to—what the old peo-
ple say—‘‘get right or get left,’’ a feeling of great
need to balance itself. I feel that strongly. And
writing about some of the signs—I think this
book is going to be calledSigns—some of the
feelings of negativity, and self-servingness, and
greed, etc. All of these I feel in the air. I thinkhomage to my hips