Empowerment and Despair
Gina Birch

Some poems take meaning from the simplicity of a single image to make a statement, as in Lucille Clifton’s “homage to my hips” (Nims and Mason 516). Other poems, such as "Tulips" by Sylvia Plath (Nims and Mason 511), use the complexity of multiple images to express their connotation. One poem is full of hope and the other is full of sorrow.

Ms. Clifton uses the image of her hips to express her feelings of self confidence and pride: “these hips are mighty hips” (line 1) and “”they don’t fit into little petty places….they go where they want to go” (4, 9). The fact that no capitalization is used in this poem makes me feel as if she is speaking softly so others will listen carefully to her empowered message. She is saying, “Look at me, I have big hips. And I am proud to have them. I am a free woman, free to go and do as I please. And sometimes, I might even share my freedom with a man. And he will be changed by the experience.” This is positive imagery, leaving me with the feeling of empowerment. I do not see Ms. Clifton hoping in this poem. Hope is the wishing for something more, the expectation that it can be better. She is not waiting or hoping for it to happen: she knows she is empowered, and she will make it happen.  Reading this poem, I feel hope in the strength that is in it.

In contrast, "Tulips" by Sylvia Plath, uses many images to show a lack of self. This poem brings forth new images in every line. And upon occasion, the images contradict each other. “My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water / Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently” (15) is a passage that brings forth the image of a soothing brook. The next line seems to jar a reader out of that comforting scene with “They bring me numbness with their bright needles” (17).

Whereas Ms. Clifton describes her big hips with pride, Ms. Plath describes herself as “a thirty-year-old-cargo boat” (22) who has been”swabbed clean of loving associations” (24). She seems to shrink away from human and inanimate relationships. The “Tulips” seem to disturb her with their brightness as she imagines “A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck” (42). She wants to be left alone to think of nothing, to “be utterly empty” (29), and the tulips won’t let her. They watch her. I feel she wants to be dead and away from the pain this world seems to give her. And yet, the tulips keep calling her back to the reality that there are those who love her and want her to be here in this world. It is so hard for her to think of others through her own pain. I feel compassion for this woman’s lack of empowerment or if there is any, it would be found in her release of her life instead of the living of life. I do not see hope in this poem.

These are two beautifully written poems, by two different women, with different views of life. The imagery is varied and strong in one poem but without hope. The other expresses so much life with one simple image and goes beyond hope to empowerment.

Work Cited

Nims, John Frederick, and David Mason. Western Wind.  (San Francisco: McGraw-Hill, 2000).