In “forgiving my father,” Lucille Clifton writes about a girl trying to forgive her father for the problems that he has caused for her, and her mother. A reason for writing this work is to interpret if she forgave her father or not. A goal for this work is to try and understand what the girl went through in her life that could lead to such intricate thoughts. My thesis is, why is she there trying to make peace with her father? Why does she want to let those feelings go?

“forgiving my father” was created by Lucille Clifton, who was an African American poet who specialized in discussion of urban black life and woman rights, heritage issues and other such issues, she wrote forgiving my father due to her relationship with her actual father during her childhood.

In the poem, other than the primary feelings of forgiveness, there are also heavy undertones of anger, sadness and maybe even regret. The anger that this girl had was towards her father due to the happenings in her past. Her father didn’t have any money, and he was heavily indebted Because of this, she assumes that it lead to the early death of the girl’s mother. The sadness that can be felt within the poem is because of the loss of her mother. She then struggles to try and understand that even though the pain from the loss of her mother may have been be caused by her father ,that she still needs to try and forgive him.

Now, within the first stanza there is talk of the fathers payday, which shows a double meaning. First it gives details to her father, such as how he got paid on Fridays, also, it reveals when the bills were due. However it also stands for the fact that because he is now dead, it is time to pay his bill towards her and her mother for all that was done to them during his life. In the poem its shows that the girl is thinking about her father with the lines “like a ghost, asking for more time” (lines 3-4).  This line shows how she constantly had her father on her mind even  to the point that he was appearing within her dreams. The reason for this is because of her internal fight over whether or not to forgive him for his past wrong doings.    

The second stanza shows more about how the father was in her past and the anger and hatred she feels. The first line within this stanza has a double meaning, “there is no more time for you there will / never be time enough”(lines 8-9). The first meaning is that her father is now dead, which leads to a reason she is trying to forgive him. The second is about how she is trying to forget him and let her previous feelings go. Even though she keeps remembering him there will never be enough time for her to properly forgive him even though she is trying.( lines 3-4) She refers to her father as a lecher and a liar, Showing that he most likely cheated on her mother, And that he was always lying about where his money was going. Because she wanted to repay her mother, the girl wants to take all that he had from his inheritance, but, because of the debts and the way that he lived, there is nothing left. Also, later in the stanza she talks about how her father had given her mother everything, but because of her father’s past debts there was nothing that he could give to her, (lines 9-10) the previous lines try to explain his actions, they begin to talk of his father, and how his actions during his sons childhood influenced the way he acted within his own family.( lines 7-9)  

The third stanza shows that the bills which the father would pay would never be paid because his pockets would always come up empty due of his bad habits and debts. (17-18)

“what am i doing here collecting” (line 21)  In this line the girl wonders why after all this time of hating her father, is she now trying so hard to forgive him and collect herself and start anew, what I understand from this collecting is that because she is now at his grave and remembering all that was done, she is trying to gather all of the bad feelings and let it go. Not only for her mother’s sake but for hers, if she forgives him, the debts that were built up in her heart from his past will be collected and she will be able to move on without the pain she was always around.

I see “forgiving my father” not only as a poem about trying to forgive someone of something terrible and struggling with that fact, but also as a story of challenge and how in the end she can overcome that challenge., Her life because of her father and his problems left marks on her, but because of the way she came to her father’s grave  to collect herself at the end she was capable of letting them go and moving on.
