jasper texas 1998

American poet Lucille Clifton’s poem “jasper texas 1998” was published in her 2000 collection, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000. In “jasper texas 1998,” Clifton reacts to the brutal lynching of a Black man named James Byrd, Jr., in Jasper, Texas in 1998. Instead of writing a traditional elegy that mourns the death of the poem’s subject, she instead creates a sort of dramatic monologue where the victim’s head is able to speak for itself directly to the reader. This choice allows Clifton to address the larger topics of racial violence and intolerance while creating a greater sense of anger and sadness in her reader.

Clifton’s poetry examines family life, her battle with cancer, racism, and gender. A prolific poet, Clifton has many well-known poems, including “homage to my hips,” “wishes for my sons,” and “blessing the boats.” Her poems often use postmodern conventions, such as using distinct choices in capitalization and punctuation to criticize the dominant ideology and culture.

Poet Biography

Lucille Clifton was born Thelma Lucille Sayles on June 27, 1936, in Depew, New York. Her father was a steel mill worker and her mother was a launderer who wrote poetry as a hobby. Their family roots could be traced to the West African kingdom Dahomey, now called the Republic of Benin.

Clifton was born with a hereditary trait called polydactyly, an extra finger on each hand. Her two extra fingers were amputated when she was a small child, a common practice at the time due to superstition and social stigma. These two ghost fingers become a recurring image throughout her poetry.

Clifton earned a scholarship to study drama at Howard University in 1953. She attended until 1955, when she transferred to Fredonia State Teachers College. In 1958, Clifton married Fred James Clifton, a professor of philosophy at the University at Buffalo and sculptor of African faces. Together, they had six children.

Clifton’s first collection of poetry, Good Times, was published in 1969. Her friend, writer Ishmael Reed, shared her poetry with poet Langston Hughes, who then published Clifton’s work in his highly influential anthology, The Poetry of the Negro (1970). In 1971, Clifton became a writer in residence at Coppin State College, where she published the collections, Good News About the Earth (1972) and An Ordinary Woman (1974). In her 1980 collection Two-Headed Woman, which won the Juniper Prize, Clifton published her most well-known poem, "homage to my hips."

Clifton was named poet laureate of Maryland from 1979-1985 and held positions at many institutions of higher learning: She taught literature and creative writing at Columbia University School of the Arts, George Washington University, the University of California at Santa Cruz, and St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

Clifton also wrote many children’s books expressly for an African American audience. These books include her Everett Anderson series, All Us Come Cross the Water (1973), Three Wishes (1976), and My Friend Jacob (1980).

Clifton won many awards and honors throughout her career. Among them, were Creative Writing Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. The collection featuring “jasper texas 1998”, Blessing the Boats: New and Collected Poems 1988-2000, won the 2000 National Book Award. From 1999 to 2005, Clifton served on the Board of Chancellors for the Academy of American Poets. Her children’s book Everett Anderson's Good-bye won the 1984 Coretta Scott King Award. She won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2007, which honors a living American poet’s extraordinary lifetime achievements.

Clifton died at age 73 on February 13, 2010, in Baltimore, Maryland, after a long battle with cancer. The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton: 1965-2010, which included much of her best known work as well as many unpublished poems, was published in 2012.

Poem Text

Clifton, Lucille. “jasper texas 1998.” 2000. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

“jasper texas 1998” is set after the lynching of James Byrd, Jr. in Jasper, Texas, in 1988. The speaker of the poem is the disembodied head of Byrd. The first stanza describes how the head came to be the speaker: It was “chosen” (Line 2) by the other components of the dead man’s body as their representative. In particular, the as the body was dragged, one of the man’s arms gestured towards the head, while his hand, in an ambiguous motion, opened and closed in the head’s direction.

The second stanza asks a series of questions centered on the deceased man’s inability or unwillingness to forgive his attackers, their sympathizers, and the white race in general in the face of unrepentant racial violence. The first question mocks the idea of brotherhood between human beings when events such as this hateful and brutal death happen. The second question wonders about the concept of humanity—are the people who treated his body in this grotesquely vicious way human? Can his mutilated corpse still be considered human? The last question forces readers to consider the legacy of racist actions, as the speaker wonders about his daughter’s reaction to her father’s murder.

In the final stanza, the speaker reflects on the final resting place of his dead body, which has left to bear the burning sun—were he alive, he would not be able to “bear it” (Line 12). The empty expressions of solidarity coming from seemingly well-intentioned neighbors mean nothing when “hope bleeds slowly” (Line 14) from the head’s mouth. The poem’s ends with the ambiguous assertion that the speaker is “done” (Line 16).