September Suite

Lucille Clifton wrote “September Suite” after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, which were carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States in New York City. The set of seven poems follows Clifton’s journey of grief, sorrow, and hope as she considers the new state of the world as she knows it. Brave and controversial in her pursuit of truth, Clifton connects and compares acts of persecution and violence across history, considering these attacks from the perspective of an African American woman. “September Suite” is a vulnerable exploration of pain, community, and myth, all in stark language. A well-established voice in the contemporary poetry scene at the time, Clifton sent the typewritten manuscript “September Suite” to the Academy of American Poets, and it was published before the end of the year.

Clifton is a celebrated African American poet, writer, speaker, and educator. She made history as the first Black woman to win the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2007. She received many honors for her work, including two Creative Writing Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a grant from the American Academy of Poets, and several prizes. Her work has been widely anthologized, and her influence on contemporary poetry is still keenly felt.

Poet Biography

Clifton was born Thelma Lucille Sayles on June 27, 1936 in Depew, New York and raised in Buffalo, New York. Her mother Thelma took pride in their family’s West African ancestry, having roots in the Kingdom of Dahomey (what is now the Republic of Benin). Clifton developed an early appreciation for language, influenced by the oral histories told by women in her family, as well as her pastor, Reverend Thomas J. Merriweather at Macedonia Baptist Church. Clifton graduated high school in 1953, attended Howard University on a scholarship from 1953 to 1955, then left to study closer to home at the State University of New York at Fredonia. The future Distinguished Professor concluded her undergraduate studies without a degree.

In 1958 she married Fred James Clifton, a professor and sculptor. Lucille worked in the New York State Government before she became a literature assistant in the Department of Education office in 1960. Clifton and her husband had six children by 1965, and in 1967 they moved to Baltimore, Maryland. With the support and admiration of writers Langston Hughes, Robert Hayden, and Ishmael Reed, Clifton won the community center Discovery Award at the 92nd Street Y in 1969. Some of her early work was anthologized in The Poetry of the Negro (1970). Her debut book of poetry, Good Times (1969), was named among the year’s top 10 books by the New York Times.

Clifton published 13 books of poetry between 1969 and 2008. While her second book, Good News About the Earth (1972), engages the racial politics of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, her third book, An Ordinary Woman (1974), marks a meaningful shift in the scope of Clifton’s work, focusing in on the writer’s identity as a woman and a poet. Intersectionality continues as a signature theme from this point forward. Clifton’s fifth and sixth books, Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir: 1969-1980 (1987) and Next: New Poems (1987), were both finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Her 10th book, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000 (2000), received the National Book Award.

Clifton held a variety of distinguished positions in academia and public arts, starting with her term as poet-in-residence at Coppin State College from 1971 to 1974. She was visiting writer at Columbia University’s School of the Arts and George Washington University from 1982 to 1983. She went on to hold professorships at University of California, Santa Cruz; St. Mary’s College of Maryland; Columbia University; and Dartmouth College. Clifton served as Maryland’s state Poet Laureate from 1979 to 1985. Clifton spent her last years in Columbia, Maryland. She died in Baltimore on February 13, 2010. She was 73 years old.

Poem Text

Clifton, Lucille. “September Suite.” 2001. Academy of American Poets.

Summary

“September Suite” is a manuscript of seven poems—one poem for each day of the week, from Tuesday to Monday. These poems revolve around terrorist attacks that took place on September 11, 2001, exploring the destruction, grief, and trauma caused by militant Sunni Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda against the United States. The speaker considers the events from a variety of individual and collective perspectives, using first-person singular and plural points of view. Poems appear in chronological order according to the date in the title. All seven poems are in free verse, and they are unmetered.

“Tuesday 9/11/01”

The first stanza of the first poem opens with a description of a storm: “thunder and lightning and our world / is another place” (Lines 1-2). In the second stanza, the speaker notes how attacks like those alluded to in the title are supposed to happen “in otherwheres / israel  ireland  palestine” (Lines 5-6), because “God has blessed America / we sing” (Lines 7-8). America was noteworthy for its exceptional status, to the point that people celebrated the country’s supposed safety. Repeating the phrase in the third stanza, the speaker considers how “God has blessed America” (Line 9) in a new way by proving that no country is invincible: “noone is exempt / the world is one” (Lines 10-11).

“Wednesday 9/12/01”

The second poem in this series is one stanza of 21 lines. The speaker considers a list of things she shouldn’t say today, one day after the attacks. The time isn’t right for her to bring up “the terrorist / inside / who threw the brick / into the mosque” (Lines 3-6), or “the ones who threatened / they would fill the streets / with arab children’s blood” (Lines 11-13). Now is also not the time for specific questions about who is and isn’t allowed to “be / american  america” (Lines 16-17). The poem closes with an image: an undifferentiated crowd standing and singing under “one flag / praying together safely” (Lines 18-19), comforted by a sense of divine love.

“Thursday 9/13/01”

The third poem opens with a two-word epigraph: “the firemen.” A single stanza of 12 lines describes their heroic actions as they “ascend” (Line 1) “into the mouth of / history / reaching through hell” (Lines 5-7). They make this daring journey because they are trying to find “the river jordan” (Line 10), which they call “heaven” (Line 9).

“Friday 9/14/01”

The fourth poem is six stanzas long, composed almost exclusively in couplets. The speaker uses first-person plural to make an assertion, calling into question the supposed safety of America mentioned in earlier poems: “some of us know / we have never felt safe” (Lines 1-2). This “weeping” (Line 4) and mourning of tragedy is something “all of us  americans” (Line 3) have done before. Still, the speaker asks whether she is justified in recalling past pain. Still in plural first person, she poses the question, “what have we done / to deserve such villainy” (Lines 8-9), and the answer is “nothing” (Line 11).

“Saturday 9/15/01”

The fifth poem is one stanza, seven lines of varying length. The speaker returns to first-person singular to tell a story about a man she knew who was persecuted for his religious beliefs. Other people believed this man to be a heretic, so they “chased him down / and beat him like a dog” (Lines 2-3), killing him. However, things changed after the man died. The world transformed into a place “filled with miracles” (Line 4). People appeared to change their minds about the man; they “forgot he was a jew and loved him” (Line 5). The speaker, bewildered by this reversal of opinion, poses rhetorical questions: “who can know what is intended? who can understand / the gods?” (Lines 6-7).

“Sunday Morning 9/16/01”

The sixth poem is “for bailey.” Like Friday’s poem, this poem is largely in couplets. The speaker is watching the river and drinking her morning coffee, “afraid and sad as are we all” (Line 4). The river is strangely ordinary, flowing on as it always has, unchanged by the tragedies of the previous week. There are so many people she should hate, the speaker thinks, but she, “cursed with the desire to understand” (Line 7), has “never been good at hating” (Line 8). In fact, she’s filled with love because of her newborn granddaughter, “born into a violent world // as if nothing has happened” (Lines 10-11). The speaker can’t help herself; she’s filled with love for the “everydayness” (Line 14) of things good and bad, all concepts “true as this river” (Line 17). To her granddaughter, the speaker is filled with love “for you” (Line 20).

“Monday Sundown 9/17/01”

According to the epigraph, it is the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. The seventh and final poem is another poem of couplets. The speaker “bear[s] witness” (Lines 1, 3) to two of the most human things, one after the other: “hate” (Line 2) and “love” (Line 4). The third stanza repeats the same line twice: “apples and honey” (Lines 5-6). Finally, the speaker rests on a hopeful declaration about what remains: “[W]hat is not lost / is paradise” (Lines 7-8).