Poetry is full of important words to give the reader context clues about the poem that is being read. These words give the reader a sense of what is going on in the world of the speaker, and the words can help give a greater understanding of the poem at hand. “forgiving my father” by Lucille Clifton is a great example of a poem that uses important words to give a deeper meaning to the poem than what is seen on the surface. Clifton’s use of words, past tense, lack of capitalization, metaphors, and similes are pertinent to understanding the resentment of the speaker and what lead her to feel the way she does about forgiving her father.

Words are, obviously, a very important part of this poem. One of the key words to begin understand the poem is in the title: “forgiving”. The word “forgiving” can have two different meanings, but in the instance of this poem, the meaning is about forgiving or canceling a debt, a financial debt to be specific. Evidence to support this claim is throughout the poem. One key part of evidence is Clifton’s tone in the poem. She seems very resentful in the way she speaks about her father. This is shown when the speaker calls her father an “old lecher” and an “old liar” in the second stanza (Clifton). The resentful tone that is present in the entire poem gives clues to the reader that the speaker is not forgiving her father of wrong doing, but she is actually forgiving him in another sense.

The words that direct the reader to understanding that the speaker is forgiving her father’s financial debt are “collecting” and “debtors’” in the final stanza. She mentions in the poem that her father’s pockets were empty every Friday which also happened to be the day that bills need to be payed. This gives the reader enough information that the father would use his money on something frivolous instead of using the money to help pay the bills, which ended up causing him to be in debt. This, in turn, ended up causing the mother to also be in debt. The fact that her parents were both in debt is stated when she says, “you lie side by side in debtors’ boxes” (Clifton).

The line previously stated also leads to reader to come to the conclusion that both of the girl’s parents are dead leaving her to forgive their debt. Proof of this assumption is found through the use of past tense in the poem when she speaking of her mother and father. A line to support this claim is, “and give the lady what she was due / but you were the only son of a needy father” (Clifton). Other words using past tense are “had” and “was” in terms of her father. Another affirmation of her mother being dead is shown through the line, “my mother’s hand opens in her early grave” (Clifton).

A concept mentioned throughout the poem is time, or lack thereof, in some points of the 

poem. Clifton writes of how there was never enough time for the speaker’s father and how there is no more time to be given. This leads the reader to understand that her father was a person that she and her mother could not count on when it came to paying bills. The fact that her father also has no more time reaffirms the idea that he is no longer alive. The idea of time is also shown in the repetition of the word “friday”. Every week, on the same day, the father never had money to contribute to paying the bills. This helps to convey to the reader how much of an annoyance it was that he never helped to pay the bills, and now, how the speaker must come up with the money that her father never seemed to have to pay off his debt.

This leads into the way Clifton does not capitalize any word in the entire poem, including the title and the word “I”, which are two things that always tend to be capitalized in any sort of writing. The lack of capitalization in the poem could be used to convey the speaker’s emotion and tone towards having to forgive her father’s debts. She is, essentially, tired of having to settle what her father did. It is tedious and disheartening for the speaker to have to repay a debt that she had absolutely no part in creating. Her parent’s dug themselves into this hole, but now, she has to fill it because her parents are both dead. This is shown in the final stanza where she says, “you were each other’s bad bargain, not mine.” (Clifton). This line explicitly shows how she feels that she should not have to be responsible for handling the financial mistakes of her parents, mostly her father, made. “I” not being capitalized in the poem could also convey that she is “speaking” is a hushed tone, like she knows what she has to do and has come to terms with it, but she is still trying to stay calm over the fact she is paying the debt of someone else.

This quiet exasperation is felt through the metaphor in the poem where the speaker refers to her father as “the pocket that was going to open / and come up empty on any friday.” (Clifton). Her father is, again, shown through this line as being completely unreliable, which has caused frustration in the speaker since she was a child until now. She uses another literary device in the first stanza when she says, “you have stood in my dreams / like a ghost, asking for more time” (Clifton). This line is particularly powerful because ghosts are said to still be in the human realm because they have unfinished business to take care of, so they are automatically given more time to complete whatever they must after death. This line shows that even in death, her father is still making excuses and asking for more time, his pockets still coming up empty.

“forgiving my father” by Lucille Clifton is a powerful poem about financial forgiveness and resentment felt towards the person who created the debts you must now pay off. Context clues throughout the poem help the reader to come to important conclusions about the speaker and her father. These clues help to show the reader, through many words and devices, how the speaker feels about her father, his debts, and the situation she is now in because of a father who gave her nothing.
