English 273cl. Uncommon Tongue: Lucille Clifton and her Literary Kin

Instructor: Tracy K. Smith
Tuesday, 12:00-2:45pm | Location: TBD
Enrollment: Limited to 15 students

Across her body of work, great American poet Lucille Clifton celebrates, defends and bears witness to the complexities and the revelations of Black life. Committed to the trends and crises of her own time period, Clifton also draws consistently and inventively upon various strands of history and myth; the result is a body of work alive with ever-urgent relevance to the 21st Century’s crises of white supremacy, political disenfranchisement and planetary disaster.  In this seminar, we will explore the ways a large-scale and oftentimes cosmic vision of existence is housed within Clifton's range of concerns and her use of familiar vernaculars. Through readings of poetry and prose from across her career, and the work of her peers and literary forbears, we’ll gauge Clifton’s aesthetic and moral commitments, which combine to form a legible and compelling philosophy of life, death, affliction, indebtedness and forgiveness.

Space permitting, this course is open to qualified undergraduates. Undergraduates, please contact Prof. Smith before classes begin if you would like to take the course.