
 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. Strained relationships in families are something a large amount of people can relate to. In “forgiving my father” by Lucille Clifton she focuses on the difficult relationship between a daughter and her father and how she is able to move on.

Clifton uses her poem to show the true, inner difficulties in a specific family and the toll poverty has taken on them. Readers learn that both her parents have died and she is left haunted by the numerous financial disputes. She recalls the Friday paydays and how her father had always come up short. She says, “you are the pocket that was going to open and come up empty any Friday.” (Clifton 526) The common uses related to money are placed throughout the poem with mentions of bills, debtors, dues, and payments. Money can be seen as the reoccurring conflict that ailed her family.

The daughter speaks poorly of her dead father and how he could not support his needing family. She refers to him as “daddy old lecher old liar”. (Clifton 525) Her harsh words show how she has detached herself emotionally from her father. She resents him and feels she and her mother were owed. She writes, “i wish you were rich so i could take it all and give the lady what she was due.” (Clifton 525) She sympathizes for what her mother had to go through all those years. Her father had not stepped up to be the man that all wives need. She knows it is too late to be given what they needed all their lives. “there is no time for you, there will never be time enough”. (Clifton 525). He cannot repay them now.

The payments are both literal and metaphorical in her poem. She did not have an ideal childhood, full of financial hardships that resulted in her family being poor. However, the stress caused by her father damaged them financially, but also emotionally. She states that she cannot go on with her life and that her mother cannot rest peacefully because of the “payments” they had lived without. The father did not provide the love and support needed to keep a relationship with his daughter alive. The father leaves her with nothing, but haunting memories and the mess he left behind. She says, “all week you have stood in my dreams like a ghost, asking for more time.” (Clifton 525). It was too late for the emotional debt to be paid, as well.

Throughout the poem we see a shift in attitude from the daughter. Despite her feelings of him being completely accountable for their struggles, she begins to understand and sympathizes with her father. She explains, “but you were the 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 525). He started his life with nothing and ended it with nothing. He had given what he could to his family, which was not much. Here, she acknowledges that he had been raised in the very same conditions he provided for his own family. She realizes she cannot entirely blame him for not being able to provide for them. Clifton relates to many situations in families, in which people make excuses for the ones they love. 

The title “forgiving my father” symbolizes her slow progression of moving on from how her father has wronged her in the past. There was a lot of anger towards him and this is her coping mechanism. At first, you can see how she struggled because of their financial problems and how she was negatively affected by her specific 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 bother them now; she is free. The only way to move past what had happed is to let go of her anger and forgive.

Clifton packs a lot of emotion into her short poem.  She uses very easy and direct language that anyone can understand and feel connected with. The family situation is explained in a relatable way with no capitalization used at all throughout her poem. This gives a very informal feel when speaking of her difficulties. She seems to be passionate about what she is writing, like she is venting and needs to release her anger through this poem. 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 about a hurtful past she once had. Writing can be a form of therapy in order to express feelings in a way that spoken word cannot. Clifton’s style of writing shows that her father might not mean that much to her anymore because of all that they went through and she is now moving past the anger. She is putting it behind her and this is her own type of “forgiveness”.

“forgiving my father” by Lucille Clifton is an accurate description of a broken relationship within a family. Families are known to be complex and Clifton writes of a specific hardship in which a daughter feels abandoned by her father. She expresses her true emotion through her word choice and does not hold back. She uses easy language to connect with all readers who can understand and relate with family issues. Readers see the transformation from anger to forgiveness, which is a familiar process for many. 