Tuesday 24 November 2009

What literary feature is in Lucille Clifton's "Moonchild"?

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"Moonchild" is a short poem, only four stanzas, but there is a great deal going on.
I'll help you examine literary features in each stanza.

Let's start with the
first three lines:

"whatever slid into my mother's
room that/late june night, tapping her great belly/summoned me out roundheaded and
unsmiling."

The use of the indefinite pronoun
"whatever," which begins the poem, suggests ambiguity and the unknown. "My
mother's room" has double-meaning: it could be a literal room, or the womb. Here, then, we
have the possible use of . Entry into either room -- or both -- results in the birth of the
narrator.

The next three lines:


"is this the moon, my father used to grin/cradling me? it was the moon/but nobody
knew it then."

In this poem, the moon is linked to
womanhood, which becomes clearer in the next stanzas. Culturally, the cycles of the moon are
linked to menstrual cycles, which is later suggested. The narrator's father [cradles] her, much
as the sky cradles the moon....

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