Poetry Blog 2

Sorry this one is late again! I keep forgetting to do blogs for some reason.

The poem "It was a dream" by Lucille Clifton really spoke to me. In it, Clifton describes a dream with which she decodes some of her inner most thoughts and feelings. The poem initially intrigued me because I feel like I have lots of dreams similar to this. Clifton speaks with her "greater self," which I took to mean her subconscious--the more introspective and pensive part of a person. Clifton says she is being "accused of her life" by her "greater self," which sounds mysterious and poetic, but I think it's just a mysterious and poetic way of saying the way she has lived her life, and I didn't read very deeply into it. I read more deeply into the next line in which Clifton says "with her extra finger." This I took to mean the sixth sense the subconscious has that the conscious mind does not: what allows the human subconscious to be more in tune with one's mental and emotional needs. This "extra finger" I suppose is why Clifton's "greater self" had an answer for her when she asked, "what could I have done?" Showing Clifton's inner wild side with her "wild hair" and "wild eyes," her "greater self" replies in a scream, "This. This. This." This last line was very impactful to me. At first, I didn't know what Clifton meant. But by reading it in the context of the few preceding lines, I realized that Clifton meant to say her "greater self" was screaming, and by "This" she meant "you could have screamed and been heard." Clifton could have spoken her mind and spoken up for what she believed in and been heard, and it would have changed her life. Because I have dreams that I think explain some of my underlying subconscious feelings, to me this poem was a very powerful way of influencing people to speak up for what they believe in. It makes me want to voice an opinion if I have one, and want to listen to what my subconscious tells me, because it has an "extra finger" that I do not.