 Poets often address real life issues in their works. They are relatable to their audiences and engage with familiar and everyday problems that people deal with. Discussing common struggles is a popular topic for writers to connect with ordinary readers who face these same complexities. 

In “forgiving my father” by Lucille Clifton she focuses on the difficult relationship between her and her father. Strained relationships in families are something a large amount of people can relate to. Payment is the major theme of the poem. She brings up paying the bills and the Friday paydays often. Her father comes up short every time a payment is due. She seems to hate him and calls him “old lecher old liar.” (Clifton 525) She resents him for not being able to give her mother what she needed all her life. She writes, “I wish you were rich so I could take it all and give the lady what she was due.” (Clifton 525) 

 However, she seems to make excuses for him later on in the poem. Clifton says, “but you were the only son of a needy father, the father of a needy son; you gave her all you had which was nothing. you have already given her all you had.” (Clifton 526) He had nothing to start with and does not entirely blame him for not being able to provide for them. It is common for people to make excuses for the ones you love.

I believe the payments are both literal and metaphorical in her poem. She clearly had a rough childhood that didn’t involve much financial help from her father, resulting in her family being poor. On the other hand, you can infer that her father could have done very little for them and that she could be asking for the “payment” in which he was not there for them. She says that is too late for him to give them what they are owed. He caused stress on his family financially, but also emotionally.

The title “forgiving my father” is very interesting. I think there was a lot of anger towards him and this is possibly how she is getting through it. I think she forgives her father to an extent and her attitude somewhat changes throughout the poem. At first, you can see how she struggled because of their financial problems and how she was negatively affected by her harsh word choice, like “daddy old pauper old prisoner, old dead man.”(Clifton 526) Later on, you can notice how she is relieved the situation is over and is somewhat letting go of her past. She writes, “you lie side by side in debtors’ boxes and no accounting will open them up.” (Clifton 526) He is dead and no collector can come to them now; she is free.

Clifton packs a lot of emotion into her short poem in which she uses very easy and direct language. She uses no capitalization at all throughout her poem. This gives a very informal feel. She seems to be passionate about what she is writing but does not use capitals or exclamation. It is very unstructured and does not have a strict rhyme scheme. She writes loosely of her struggles, like she is talking to one of her friends. Clifton’s style of writing shows that her father might not mean that much to her anymore and that she is letting go of the anger. She is putting it in the past and this is her own type of “forgiveness”.

“forgiving my father” by Lucille Clifton is an accurate description of a struggling daughter in a poor family. Families are known to be complex and Clifton writes of a specific hardship in which she faced. She expresses her emotion through her word choice and uses easy language to connect with all readers who can understand and relate with family issues.