"homage to my hips," by Lucille Clifton

Let's gather and praise our hips and repeat phrases (anaphoras)!

O! Let us be joyful, have compassion, and honor our bodies! I use my hips to shimmy into jeans, to dance to Renaissance, to bend and stretch in the morning, to fill out a dress. My lover holds them holds them in a hug. I put my hand on one when thinking or waiting (impatiently). They bump into doors, they crack, they jut, they’re bony or padded by extra fat—they have grown and changed as I have. There is so much to love about our bodies, about our hips. Mine was a small, incomplete homage to my hips. Let’s gather and read Lucille Clifton’s.

Please, listen to Clifton read this poem here (you will not be disappointed).

homage to my hips
by Lucille Clifton

these hips are big hips
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,   
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!

Lucille Clifton is an institution in the poetry world, and it’s important to know a bit about who she was to appreciate her work. Clifton was a poet concerned with the human experience, in particular the lives of black Americans. Once, in an interview with Michael S. Glaser (former Poet Laureate of Maryland), Lucille Clifton said, “I would like to be seen as a woman whose roots go back to Africa, who tried to honor being human. My inclination is to try to help.” Clifton sought to write and spread joy, write about black bodies and histories, relay the experiences in her life and others’. She was a poetic archivist. She was a stylistic innovator. She was a profound poet, and her work is evergreen.

Here, Clifton praises her hips, catalogs their movements, their presence. She begins many lines with the phrase “these hips are,” and this anaphora (repetition of a phrase at the beginning of a line in a poem) allows Clifton to characterize her hips. They are magical, they are mighty, they have the power to seduce men with their movement and existence.

Clifton’s hips are free and independent! They are free, they move where they want to move, they can’t be held back. We, the readers, know that these hips are attached the Clifton, that these are her hips, but Clifton isolates them. She treasures her hips as their own entity, as something detached from her that should be loved because of what they are how they exist. Clifton writes, “i have known them / to put a spell on a man and / spin him like a top!”

There is so much praise in this poem (it is an homage!) and every time I read it, the joy and love rubs off on me. It makes me want to dance and spin, bend over and kiss my hips (impossible), or at least wiggle them in the mirror. Writing joy is challenging. There usually is not a lot of tension when you are writing about happiness and joy, thus making happy stories and poems less compelling. For me, the existence of this poem is the tension. The inclination is to hate your body, to hate what doesn’t conform, to slim big hips and be modest, to be visible while young and fade to the background as you age (such is the plight of women in a patriarchy). In her love and praise, Clifton creates (and fights) the tension. She dares (as she should) to love her big, mighty, magic hips. It makes me love mine.

If you want to read more by Lucille Clifton… you can read some of her work here, and if you have fallen in love with her like I did, read everything she has ever written.

If you want to read more about joy… try reading Ross Gay’s Inciting Joy, a collection of essays on finding joy, and fostering it.

If you want to try writing poetry… it’s time to write about your body! Focus on a part, a feeling, an organ, an arm or leg. Write about it, good or bad (but I hope Clifton inspired you to be positive).