Blessing the Boats

Lucille Clifton’s short poem “blessing the boats” is one of her most well-known works. It was originally published in her book Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988–2000, from Boa Editions. Emblematic of Clifton’s writing style and themes it displays elements of the Black Arts Movement, the Post-Confessional Movement, and speaks to Clifton’s extreme faith and resilience in the face of adversity. Although the poem does not state it directly, it likely was inspired by Clifton’s struggle with breast cancer, kidney failure, and growing into old age. Other poems in her book Blessing the Boats deal explicitly with the challenges she has with her body, however the titular work “blessing the boats” makes use of the metaphor of “boats” to address these corporeal issues.

In the poem the speaker uses boats as a metaphor for transition through difficult and uncertain times. She repeats the phrase “may” (Lines 1, 6, 9, and 12) in wishing the listener or reader of the poem faith as they sail “through this to that” (Line 13). Using this metaphor makes the meaning of the poem less rooted in her specific personal experience and more applicable to anyone going through changes. It reads like a prayer and mimics some of the phrases of the famous Irish blessing, “May the Road Rise to Meet You.” Like so many of Clifton’s poems it abandons typical capitalization and regular meter to use more informal and irregular patterns of speech. This helps make it accessible to everyone. The poem makes it clear that it was written at St. Mary’s College of Maryland where Clifton was Distinguished Professor of Humanities from 1995 to 1999. From her office she would have had a view of the boats on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, which likely helped influence this work.

Poet Biography

Lucille Clifton was born on June 27, 1936 in Buffalo, New York, where she spent her formative years. Originally, she was given the name Thelma Lucille Sayles, but adopted her husband’s last name, Clifton, when they married in the 1950s. As a writer she would be known by her middle name, Lucille, which means light.

Lucille’s mother was herself a poet who wrote in formal meter. Lucille recounts her mother teaching her how to write poetry as a child. Lucille’s father did not approve of his wife’s writing poetry and one night burned some of her work in a scene Clifton later recalled in her poetry.

Lucille lived with her husband Fred, a professor of philosophy, in Baltimore where they had six children together and where Lucille had her first poems published by Langston Hughes in the anthology The Poetry of the Negro. In 1969 Clifton published her first book, Good Times, which was named one of the year’s ten best books in the New York Times. In 1984 Fred Clifton died of cancer.

Clifton was invited to teach at the University of California, where she lived for four years before returning to Maryland to teach at St. Mary’s college. She was named Poet Laureate of Maryland in 1985. In 1994 she was diagnosed with breast cancer, a condition she would battle for 15 years before she finally died in 2010. Over the course of her life she won multiple awards, including the National Book Award, Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, Coretta Scott King Award and others. In 1988 she was the first poet to have two books of poems nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in the same year.

Poem Text

Clifton, Lucille. “blessing the boats.” 2000. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

With the first line the speaker evokes a nautical setting. She is speaking to an imagined “you,” (Line 4) who is presumably on a boat with her, being taken out to sea. The speaker begins by saying

may the tide

that is entering even now

the lip of our understanding

carry you out

beyond the face of fear (Lines 1-5).

The speaker uses the figurative language to explain that she has an “understanding” (Line 3) which is helping to “carry” (Line 4) her, and us, the reader, “beyond the face of fear” (Line 5). The speaker is expressing a wish that she and the “we” of the poem will overcome or move beyond fear, but it suggests that this is just now happening and she has not completely gone beyond fear yet.

In the next sentence of the poem the speaker says

may you kiss

the wind then turn from it

certain that it will

love your back (Lines 6-9)

This is a metaphor. The idiom, “May the wind be at your back,” suggests that a person will have an easy time moving forward because the wind is pushing you, rather than you pushing against the wind. The next sentence “may you/ open your eyes to water / water waving forever” (Lines 9-11). In this phrase the speaker personifies the water so that it is “waving forever” (Line 11). In the last sentence the speaker wishes “you in your innocence” (Line 12) be able to “sail through this to that” (Line 13).