Lucille Clifton has composed a delightfully funny and entertaining poem about the unlikely subject of big hips. While most ladies feel less than full of pride for a big rear end, Clifton’s speaker gleams with pride over her wide bottom. The speaker has nothing but praise for her huge keister.
Introduction with Text of “homage to my hips”
The speaker in Lucille Clifton’s hilarious little ditty is gloating about an unlikely target for gloat—the physical feature that many woman would prefer to hide. But this speaker is filled with pride about her possession of a huge set of hips; thus, she colorfully and insistently flaunts those “magic” hips.
Lucille Clifton’s style is unique. She has no compunction about keeping her letters all in lower case. Often in the hands of much less talented craftsman, such a departure from traditional grammar/mechanics looks like mere showing off or trying to put forth the rebel- without-a-cause attitude, as the verse then cannot support that departure.
But Clifton’s unusual enjambment also works well, while in the hands of a poetaster the same attempt at odd line breaks merely disrupts meaning while demonstrating immaturity and amateurishness.
homage to my hips
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!
Commentary on “homage to my hips”
In Lucille Clifton’s “homage to my hips,” a big-hipped woman celebrates the size of her big bottom. She elucidates her pride of size in her colorful little drama, revealing her satisfaction with the humble yet significant pride-showing word “homage.”
One almost wants to think of the title as “homage to my big hips,” but Lucille had the foresight to allow the reader to discover the reason for that “homage” after experiencing the poem itself.
First Movement: Big -Hipped and Proud
these hips are big hips they need space to move around in. they don’t fit into little petty places.
The speaker begins with the provocative statement, “these hips are big hips.” Such audacity would take the wind out of the sails of any name-calling huckster who would try to make this speaker’s rump the butt of any joke.
This woman is proud her big hips, and her pride is infectious; she plans to crow about her big hips and make people know the importance of her huge posterior. The speaker then claims that her hips need lots of space “to / move around in.” She doesn’t just sit on that humongous keister; she moves it around.
She is an active broad; she’s in your face. So she demands room to move her behind. She gives no quarter to anyone who would denigrate her big bottom.
This speaker will not tolerate anything “little” or “petty.” She is influenced by her big rear to see all the world as a humungous opportunity to do things, to move around as a big, strong force. She sees life itself full of space for all things “big” which she has discovered to be a beautiful thing.
Second Movement: Free-Hipped and Profound
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.
Those big hips cannot squeeze into small spaces. Those small places are simply too “little” for her, and they represent “petty places” that will not allow the expanse of freedom she demands for herself, her life, and her mind.
As her hips are broad, so is her mind. She will not be limited physically or mentally. She belongs to the world where profundity reigns. She brooks no little-minded thinkers. Her big hips are “free hips.” They go where they wish, and they do as they please.
Those expansive hips are wide as the cosmos. They have elevated her level of courage. Enslaved lesser hips and minds can just get out of her way. She will push her big hips into any place that will accommodate them.
She will not allow the mediocre minds to put her in chains. Her hips will never abide by any restraints; they move where they desire to move and when they desire to move. They keep on moving; they keep on achieving what her broad mind can imagine.
This big-hipped speaker is proud of her accomplishments, and those big hips are a large part of that achievement. She will sing to her hips as she transcends the limitations that would hem them and her round.
This speaker’s world is big like her hips; her mind is even bigger than those big hips. And she will have everyone take notice. There will never be a place or a person who can limit this strong woman, whose hips have now become a symbol for her strength, liberation, and determination for success.
Third Movement: Magic-Hipped and Glory-Hipped
these hips are magic hips. i have known them to put a spell on a man and spin him like a top!
Spreading out in all directions, the mental acuity of this big-hipped woman will not be stopped from accomplishing all the glory, wisdom, and rewards her ability can bring her. Her hips “do what they want to do.”
She cannot be caged or shrunk by social standards. Thin hips are for small minds, and her mind is big like her hips. The speaker then hints that those hips have not kept a big fat woman from enjoying sexual experience once thought to belong only to thin, emaciated supermodels. Her hips are “magic.”
They can capture the imagination and attention of any man, and then after they capture the man, they can cause him to succumb to her will. That spinning-top man comes under spell because of those hips that perform their spell-working.
The speaker has no compunction about bragging up those big hips. She wants men and women alike to understand that she is proud of that prominent physical feature.
This declaration is her protest against smallness in any form—especially when it comes to her bottom. She gloats about a physical feature that many woman would wish to hide, but she is full of pride about her big keister as she flaunts those spell-binding, “magic” hips.
Graveyard Whistler Presents Verönique Flüres’ “A Tale of Political Intrigue”
Fiction Alert! For entertainment, not information!
Belmonte Segwic is a fictional character, created to explore the world of literary studies. Publishing under his nom de plume, Graveyard Whistler, he invents characters, events, and places—all fictional. Any resemblance to real people, living or deceased, to actual events, or to real geographic locations is unintentional.
Graveyard Whistler posts primarily what he discovers in his literary studies research. But a politico, Verönique Flüres, sent him this piece, saying she thought it important to get this information out because she knows all the pertinent facts. She changed names and dates to mask the guilty.
A Pre-Foreword from Graveyard Whistler
As my regular readers know, I plant most of my writings on my personal website, and I have gained a rather dedicated following. However, one of my readers suggested that I might try posting articles on a site called Fulcrum Letters.
The Fulcrum Letters outfit claims to be for writers and purports to feature only the best pieces of work in any field of endeavor and to pay writers for their efforts. The reader/follower suggested that I might make a few extra dollars on my more worthy pieces. I was skeptical but I thought I’d give it try.
I discovered that the editors of the site have an obvious, political bias. But more important was the discovery that they cannot distinguish between fiction vs non-fiction and literary vs expository writings.
Here’s how I know: every article that I submitted that contained any negative view or refutation of their political bias garnered a red-flag, meaning they would keep the article up (because it receives lots of traffic and ad clicks), but they red-flagged them and admonished me to reconsider the “tone” and revise to a more “acceptable state of standard logic.”
And that happened not only on expository pieces that did have an obvious political view, but even with literary fiction (even satire)—pieces that might have a character whose dialog identified him as leaning toward one end of the political spectrum.
In the “Conversations Area” of the site, I asked other writers if they had experienced such treatment, and many responded with the same complaint that I have, and some even stated that they actually had articles censored—poof, deleted from the site—even satire, that argued against or presented ideas against the bias of the FL editors.
Of course, not all literary pieces are of equal value, but writers know their own works and when they see that their pieces are being unfairly criticized or censored, they know they are the victims of unfair bias.
I finally decided to remove all of my articles from Fulcrum Letters—close to 600 of them in all—and leave those biased editors to go after whatever it is they were chasing. On the one hand, I feel guilty for allowing myself to engage in self-censorship, but on the other hand, I could not in good conscience allow my work to be used by those editors for their own financial gain, as I received just a pittance for my work.
Censorship is a travesty in a supposedly free country; unfree countries themselves are travesties. But when we run up against any organization that engages in political bias and censorship, we must stand and push back against it.
Actually, political bias in and of itself is not the problem. The problem is when editors allow their bias to unfairly criticize, denigrate, and censor their opposition. We need to hear all sides of issues, and if we can’t, we don’t have enough information to make good choices.
The piece I offer here—Verönique Flüres’ “A Tale of Political Intrigue”—is an example of that bad “tone” and “substandard logic” that the editors of Fulcrum Letters found unsavory. After wiping it form FL, I revised it and am now placing it here on my personal site. Verönique Flüres wanted her message to get out, and I’m honoring her wishes.
Luckily, I don’t have to self-censor on my own site! Have a happy! And enjoy!
Foreword by Graveyard Whistler: On Verönique Flüres
Customarily, I post things here only that I have encountered in my literary research. But this gem came to me from a source, who says she just wanted to get this story out because she knows the true facts of the situations. Still, she claims she has changed the names of people and places to protect the guilty.
Her name is Verönique Flüres; she is a citizen of Lichtenbourg but has worked for three decades in Washingtown, Metropolis District, and traveled overseas often between that locale and Mukabull, Krimelin-in-Russha, and she may be the only person in the world who actually knows personally all of the people involved with those two political items in question: the dossier and the laptop.
The “Tin-Pot Dossier”—aka the “Tambor-KiR Conspiracy Report”—and the “Numrod Frake, Jr., Laptop”—aka the “Computer from Hell-Hole”—will likely remain two of the most controversial items to grace—or disgrace, as it were—the political scene: one is authentic, the other could not be more inauthentic.
So I turn the floor over to Verönique Flüres:
The Dutiful Dossier
In July 20–, after business tycoon Reynaldo Manuel Tambor, declared his intention to run for the office of President of the Principalities (POP), the world-famous Britnish scholar and humanitarian, Professor K. S. Timmpott, began an in-depth research project to determine the eligibility and desirability of the noted businessman and former silver screen celebrity to hold that high office.
Timmpott found himself embroiled in an undertaking of a lifetime, and he was thrilled to find that high ranking Principalities politicians, including former Underwriter of the Commonweal, Murftry Brainfree, and her political allies in the Demon-Run-in Party (DRiP) were eager to not only verbally encourage Timmpott’s project but more than willing to support financially that important research.
Important Findings
In record time with the assistance of lucrative financial arrangements from the Brainfree Conglomeration and the DRiP, which allowed the hiring of an army of research assistants, Timmpott was able to finish his project, which culminated in the famous Timmpott Dossier, aka Tin-Pot Dossier.
The final report appeared by January 20–, just in time to begin throwing monkey wrenches into the machine known of the Tambor Presidential Campaign.
The dossier was released and the upstream media organizations then began the vetting process, and again in record time were able to corroborate the findings that Professor Timmpott’s work had produced. Key findings include the following:
A high level cohort of Tambor campaign workers, including the Tambor family and Tambor himself, were exposed as agents of the Krimelin-in-Russha (KiR). Tambor was revealed as a puppet of Vladivostok Kagebee, strong man and dictator extraordinaire of KiR.
During federal police raids on the Tambor campaign headquarters in every major city of the Principalities, the top spy agency retrieved a treasure trove of names, dates, and strategies coordinated by the Tambor campaign and Krimelin-in-Russha (KiR) agents. Many phone and texts message between Tambor and Kagebee were seized.
Records were found involving emails, text messages, photos, bank accounts, and many lists of KiR requests for Tambor once he was installed in the Ovalish Office, for example, one of the most damning requests directly from Vladivostok Kagebee, was that a newly elected POP Tambor was to hobble the progress of the weakened but struggling government of YiTrane, a neighboring country to KiR.
Tambor’s main messenger, coordinating many of the meetings and communiques between Tambor and Kagebee, was Karen Suss-Wage, a high level operative who traveled to KiR over 30 times between July 20– and January 20–. It is expected that Suss-Wage will be one of the first Tambor campaign operatives to be tried for treason after Tambor’s presidential term has ended.
Not only did the Tambor campaign collude with KiR to win the 20– election, it also sought to say mean things about Murftry Brainfree. For example, it was revealed that Kagebee had suggested that Tambor continually refer to Murftry Brainfree as “Mad Money Murftry,” which the presidential contender then did at every one of his campaign rallies.
Conclusion
Despite the findings of Professor Timmpott’s thoroughly vetted and widely reported dossier, Reynaldo Manuel Tambor did succeed to the presidency because of the many acts of collusion with KiR. Evidence has even been discovered that three out of five voting machines during the 20– election process had been hacked and votes changed by KiR computer specialists.
While many citizens of the Principalities have remained nearly oblivious to most of the credible information offered by Professor Timmpott’s dossier as the upstream media has continued to protect and cover for Tambor, their favored candidate.
That protection and cover remains even now moving into the next election season, sources say that after Tambor’s term is over, he and the Tambor family will all be arrested and will face charges of treason, along with all of the other campaign operatives including Karen Suss-Wage.
Tamborian opponents in the government are waging a campaign to re-instate public hanging as punishment for treason. Very likely the entire Tambor family and all government officials, including High Court picks, will hang in the public square—likely in the courtyard of the Emancipator Memorial. Tickets to view the hanging will be sold on eBay, and sources say they expect to sell enough tickets to pay off the entire national debt.
The Lurking Laptop
In April 20–, Numrod Frake, Jr., brilliant, accomplished son of the beloved former vice-president, Numrod Frake, Sr.,—who humbly declared that Junior Frake is the “smartest dude he ever had the acquaintance to”—took a laptop computer that his father had given him for Christmas to a LapTop Computer Repair Shop in — (city retracted to protect residents), to find out why the computer was running so slow.
The LapTopRepairman, Jeff Johnus, saw immediately that the LapBook had too many files on the desktop, an operation notorious for slowing down computers. The LapTopRepairman noticed some of the filenames and became suspicious: things like “Pops and the YiTrane Prosecutor,” “Pops or the ‘big lug’ as I lovingly call him,” “Uncle Jock and the Ching-Chang Comm-Brunch date,” and “list of big bucks for each of us Frakes—Yay!”
Suspicious Repairman and the Malignant Mayor
The suspicious LapTopRepairman hatched a plan to get into those files. He’d heard on the conspiracy dabbling WOLFPACKnews Network that the Frakes had been pulling some shady deals in foreign countries to haul in big bucks by offering to those countries the influence of the big Frake name.
He also knew that the current president was finally being held accountable by being impeached for his quid-pro dealings with YiTrane. So to get Junior Frake to leave his laptop, the LapTopRepairman told the brilliant but unsuspecting lad that he would have to keep the computer overnight so he could send for parts to help repair the slow-running machine.
So Junior Frake leaves the laptop. But then when he did not return the next day to retrieve it, the LapTopRepairman let the computer sit on his shelf for the 75 days required for considering the computer abandoned. After the 90 days, he tried to contact Junior Frake but was unable to locate him.
Waiting another week, he then tried to contact Junior one more time but again was unable to contact the very busy world traveling entrepreneur-now-turned Picasso-esque artist. Then Jeff Johnus made several copies of the computer’s hard drive.
Jeff Johnus, the LapTopRepairman, then decided to give the hard drive to a man named Cosmo Karakus, who had been the mayor of a large city, running that city into the ground—literally in that on one fine day in September some people managed to do something that exploded and brought down several of the tallest buildings in that city, killing over a million citizens and maiming many millions more for life.
So the disgraced mayor fiddled with emails, made them look like poor Numrod Frake, Jr., and his beloved father and world-class statesman, Numrod Frake, Sr., had done something mean.
Conclusion
The morally bankrupt mayor then peddled a concocted story to several smut magazines and waited for the stuff to hit the fan. Of course, the stuff never did hit the fan because all of the legitimate news outlets were able to see that the stuff was just that—stuff, or more specifically “Krimelin-in-Russha disfornication.”
Thus, the country was finally made aware that Vladivostok Kagebee was still in charge of their country and likely would be until the country could safely elect Junior Frake’s beloved father as president—or perhaps evict the scoundrel Tambor, perhaps even installing the rightful heir to the Ovalish Office, the long-suffering Murtry Brainfree, who has sacrificed so much for her country.
The shame of all shames is that had Ms. Murftry Brainfree been elected and secured the Ovalish Office, none of the preceding would have even occurred.
Well, that’s what I know for now. I’ll report more as it comes in.
Afterword by Graveyard Whistler
Pretty bizarre story, but Verönique said she was glad to get it out there so folks can do with it what they will. I’m glad I could be a platform on which she could offer her insights. History is brimming with such subterfuge, and I am always glad that my concentration area is literature instead of hard history. Too much politics for my blood!
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