Contents: Introduction Author Biography Poem Text Poem Summary Themes Style Historical Context Critical Overview Sources Further Reading

Criticism

Chris Semansky

Semansky publishes widely in the field of twentieth-century poetry and culture. In the following essay, he considers how Clifton’s poem uses the idea of doubling as a strategy for self-reflection.

Clifton uses the image of the doppelganger to reflect on the life that she’s had and to envision her future life. Doppelganger is a German word for alter ego, or other self, and it marks just one of the “doubling” techniques Clifton uses in “Climbing.” The doppelganger motif is popular in literature and has been used by many poets and writers, including Edgar Allen Poe, Octavio Paz, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Writers often create versions of their other selves as mirrors of sorts to provide them with a clearer picture of their own lives. These representations are often either idealized or demonized projections of a part of the writer. For example, in Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the woman the narrator sees in the yellow wallpaper is a symbolic projection of the speaker’s self struggling to break free of patriarchal oppression.

Clifton’s double is an idealized version of the self she wants to become. It “precedes” her on the rope of life because it exists only in the future. Many people imagine what they will be like in the future and attempt to gauge their progress in relation to that image. The problem, of course, is that the future is already here, and idealized versions of oneself must, by their very nature, remain unattainable. This is also the paradox of desire itself: it can only exist with an object; once that object is attained, there must be a new one. Significantly, Clifton never presents an image of this idealized self’s body. It is represented only by “braids the color of rain.” Braids, an interweaving of strands of hair, are themselves another image of doubling, a way in which many are made from one. As a trope — a figurative use of a word — the braids stand in for the many selves and bodies that proceed from the one body. Ropes themselves are braided strands of fiber, woven together to create a single, stronger thing. What, then, do braids signify? They signify the idea of youth itself: stylized and sensual, they mark their wearer as “hip” and confident. That the speaker doesn’t wear them tells readers she is, stylistically at least, perhaps more conventional in appearance.

The speaker’s body is at the center of the poem, but readers are never given an explicit representation of her body. It’s clear, however, that body image is at least a part of what the speaker battles as she ages. Her desire for a younger body and her second-guessing of her past both point to common issues people encounter in the ageing process. Rather than giving in to these doubts, however, Clifton’s speaker goes forward in spite of them.

“Climbing” is as much a poem about falling as it is about rising. There can be no struggle to “rise” without the fear of falling. In this case, falling means giving up on life and on the object before her: her idealized self, the one she would grow into. To fall would be to settle for less, to ignore the “bowl ... / burning to be filled.” The speaker climbs because she envisions herself moving towards that future self and what it promises. That she never attains that self is irrelevant, for it is the climbing itself that is important, the desire to keep going. Rather than fearing the future, as Wilde’s Dorian Gray might, Clifton embraces it.

Paralleling the idea of doubling is Clifton’s use of repetition. The string of “maybe’s” lengthens, as the years the speaker has lived and the notches she has already passed on the rope add up. Clifton’s words also sonically embody “twosomeness,” as in the alliterative phrases “boy’s bone” and “bowl in me / burning.” These images are themselves undergirded by the repetition of the phrase “maybe i should have wanted less,” an inverted way of telling readers that she has wanted much.

The image of the other self provides a practical poetic vehicle for exploring the subject of regret, a common theme in Clifton’s poetry. In the same collection as “Climbing” comes “it was a dream”:

in which my greater self
rose up before me
accusing me of my life
with her extra finger
whirling in a gyre of rage
at what my days had come to.
what,
i pleaded with her, could i do,
oh what could i have done?
and she twisted her wild hair
and sparked her wild eyes
and screamed as long as
i could hear her
This. This. This.

The speaker’s questioning of the “greater self” echoes the statements of regret in “Climbing,” and, coincidentally, this self also has “wild hair.” An observation that Wallace Peppers makes of poems from An Ordinary Woman can also be applied to those in The Book of Light: “The strong sense of general disappointment coupled with the sinking suspicion that one’s life has missed the mark strikes responsive chords in many readers. And worse still, from the speaker’s point of view, is the growing realization that this enormously unsatisfying condition is probably permanent.” If regret is “terminal” in “it was a dream,” it is ambiguous at best in “Climbing,” for the “maybe’s” don’t ring true as missed opportunities. After all, how does one “want less,” and how can anyone keep the body they started with? If anything, the speaker’s tone in this poem is at once self-doubtful and defiant, the attitude like that of an athlete pushing forward toward the finish line. A poem closer in regret to “it was a dream” is the title poem of An Ordinary Woman, written when Clifton had almost hit the fortieth notch on the rope:

Plain as cake
an ordinary woman
i had expected to be
smaller than this,
more beautiful,
wiser in Afrikan ways,
more confident,
i had expected
more than this.
The sentiment is familiar.

Expectations, disappointment, acceptance: the stuff of an examined life. What was familiar at forty is familiar at sixty.

With aging comes reflection, and Clifton performs that act in both senses of the word: she looks back on her past and in that looking sees an image of herself in the future. The final image of doubling in the poem is the image of her “hungry” hands, the only body part of the present-tense speaker mentioned. Reflective readers, moved by Clifton’s evocation of the struggle and joy that comes with desiring more from life, will see themselves in these hands.

Source: Chris Semansky, Critical Essay on “Climbing,” in Poetry for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.

What Do I Read Next?

• The 1973 anthology The Poetry of Black America: Anthology of the 20th Century, edited by Adoff Arnold and introduced by Gwendolyn Brooks, contains poems by Clifton and many other prominent African-American poets, including Amiri Baraka, Sam Cornish, Countee Cullen, and Sterling Allen Brown.
• Clifton is also a writer of children’s books. Her book, Everett Anderson’s 1 – 2 – 3 (1992), illustrated by Ann Grifalconi, tells the story of Everett Anderson, a young African-American boy living in the city, who comes to terms with his mother’s new friend and grows up in the process.
• Terry McMillan’s 1992 blockbuster novel, Waiting to Exhale, chronicles the lives of four thirty-something black women, their romantic adventures, and their deep emotional bonds with one another. Adapted into a popular movie, this novel, in part, examines how these women respond to ageing.
• Another popular McMillan novel, How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1996), explores the desires and choices of Stella Payne, a forty-something black woman who unexpectedly falls in love with a much younger man.

There may be many questions about who this woman in braids might be, but there are no questions that suggest that the speaker in this poem is reflecting on injustices in her life that have caused her pain. It is obvious that she is questioning the paths that she has chosen: “maybe i should have had braids. / maybe i should have kept the body i started / maybe i should have wanted less.” Clifton repeats this last line farther down in the poem, bringing home the sadness behind the statement. In wanting less, maybe she would not now feel so “hungry.” In wanting less, maybe she would not be “struggling.” She is full in the sense of no longer being slim, but the fullness comes from the “bowl in me” which remains empty. Readers do not know what the speaker wanted that she did not receive. They do not know what the speaker hungers for. But it is this indefiniteness that draws the reader in. By not filling in the spaces, Clifton touches the empty spaces in all women, in all readers, in spite of their gender. She touches everyone who has ever experienced failure, disappointment, or injustice. But Clifton does not leave her readers in this place. She does not leave them lost in self-pity. Although she has suffered and commiserates with others who have suffered, Clifton is a woman with a positive attitude.

This positive attitude is expressed in different ways. For instance, in another of her poems, “song at midnight,” she writes: “come celebrate / with me that everyday / something has tried to kill me / and has failed.” The “something” is not named, but it is defined as potentially lethal. Despite the potential danger that threatens her, she wants to celebrate. She focuses on the fact that she has survived, not on the something that has tried to kill her. This is a message that Clifton most likes to deliver. She sets her poems up, exposing her concerns, empathizing with others who have experienced sadness and fears, but then she encourages movement, progression, even celebration. In her poetry, there are often two elements at play: both the dangers and frustrations of life and the resiliency of the speaker. This resiliency is also apparent in the poem “Climbing.” Regardless of the speaker’s sorrows, her tears, her pain, she keeps on climbing.

Although Clifton’s poetry often takes on the sadder elements of life, it has also been referred to as joyful. As Rosenberg writes, “Ms. Clifton’s poetry is big enough to accommodate sorrow and madness and yet her vision emerges as overwhelmingly joyous and calm.” Clifton describes her own positive outlook on life in her poem “hag riding”:

when i wake to the heat of morning
galloping down the highway of my life
something hopeful rises in me
rises and runs me out into the road
and i lob my fierce thigh high
over the rump of the day and honey
i ride i ride.

In her poem “Climbing,” Clifton ends with her speaker rising, pulling herself up “hand over hungry hand.” She is moving, despite her hunger, despite her struggles, despite her fear of death. She is moving, although she might not know where she is going or what is waiting for her along the way. In “Climbing,” all she knows is that she is heading toward “Sixty,” whatever that will mean. She does not know whether her hunger will be satisfied when she gets there. She does not know if her struggles will cease or become more difficult. She leaves many questions unanswered, as does this poem.

In another of her poems, however, she seems to console herself by hinting at a possible course of action in dealing with all those unanswered questions. In “evening and my dead once husband,” she first ponders, “why cancer and terrible loneliness / and the wars against our people,” but then she offers these lines in the same poem, as if in answer to all the questions that she has posed: “and out of the mist a hand / becomes flesh and i watch / as its pointing fingers spell / it does not help to know.”

Maybe in Clifton’s indefinite descriptions of race and age, or even in her uncertain allusions to earthly or mythical beings, she is saying that it is not in the knowing, it is not in the naming of specifics, it is not even in the naming of exact injustices or the pain caused by discrimination and unfairness and all the other frustrations and disappointments of life that one comes to accept human existence. In self-reflection it is not so important to second-guess what was not done, what could have been, what needs were never met. It’s not about specifics at all. Life is vague, both in memories about the past and projected wishes for the future. Life is as vague and unanswerable as the images in Clifton’s poetry.

One thing, however, that Clifton is not ambiguous about is her role as a poet. In an interview with Katie Davis on the radio program All Things Considered, Clifton had this to say: “I write about being human. If you have ever been human, I invite you to that place that we share.” In the end, it does not matter who the images represent in the poem “Climbing.” The poem is a meditation of a woman looking back on her life in an attempt to understand what waits for her in her future. In her meditation, the speaker beckons to everyone who reads this poem to follow, just as she is following the nondescript woman in braids. Do not forget what you have been through, the speaker seems to be saying, but don’t ever let it stop you from climbing.

Source: Joyce Hart, Critical Essay on “Climbing,” in Poetry for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.

Judi Ketteler

Ketteler has taught literature and composition. In this essay, she discusses Lucille Clifton’s use of an extended metaphor to highlight the importance of both personal and political struggles of black women.

“The presence of another climber also establishes that the speaker is not alone in her journey; there is a community of climbers.”

“Climbing,” by Lucille Clifton, is a poem about possibility and about rising to meet the challenges that life presents. Clifton’s poetics are down to Earth; her language is straightforward and her images are sharp. She uses an extended metaphor of climbing a rope to paint a vivid picture of the struggle, as well as the beauty, inherent in black womanhood as she has experienced it.

The title of the poem is key: It sets the mood. It is not called “To Climb” or “The Climb” but “Climbing.” Climbing creates motion, implying active movement in the present. This is more than a story of past climbs; it is about the everyday climb of the present moment and of the future, which lies stretched out before the speaker. “Climbing” is an action poem. Whereas “action” might be associated more closely with epic poems written by men about war and history, Clifton’s poem is distinctly about women. As a poet and children’s book author, she has written on many topics but has continually returned to women’s issues. Literary critic Andrea Benton Rushing sees Clifton’s writing as unique:

Several things set Clifton apart from the strophes of others. First, she has written more poems about women’s lives than any other African-American poet, except Gwendolyn Brooks. Second, she has consistently done so with sinewy diction, a confiding voice, and stark imagery.

The first words of the poem are, in fact, “a woman.” From the beginning, the speaker has made a decision to focus the reader’s attention on the woman, and in a larger sense, on womanhood. The speaker is observing the woman as she passes her on the climb: “a woman precedes me up the long rope.” The speaker calls attention to the action of climbing by situating herself as a climber and naming the woman as a fellow climber. The woman is actively climbing, not just up any rope but a long rope. In the next line, the speaker offers a short, physical description of the woman climbing: “her dangling braids the color of rain.” This description makes the woman sound unique; the word “dangling” suggests grace and beauty, and the image of rain is one of peace and tranquility. This woman doesn’t seem to be in a hurry; she is slowly climbing up the long rope. The presence of another climber also establishes that the speaker is not alone in her journey; there is a community of climbers.

As the speaker progresses up the rope, she begins to doubt herself, to ask herself nagging questions: “maybe i should have had braids. / maybe i should have kept the body I started, / slim and possible as a boy’s bone.” This set of images is rich and suggestive. The line “maybe i should have kept the body I started” implies that the speaker is no longer a young woman. Her body has seen the battle scars of womanhood, and she is aging. In younger years, the speaker’s body was full of possibility, “like a boy’s bone,” not totally grown to its full potential, but strong and confident. Women writers often address body issues; much poetry has been written about the female body as a site of struggle, and Clifton is echoing the sentiments expressed by many other women writers.

The self-doubt continues throughout the poem. The speaker’s tone is a questioning one. Her voice is honest and sincere but not overconfident. As she climbs, she is looking back on her life, trying to decide if the struggle was worth it. “maybe i should have wanted less,” she suggests to herself in line six. It is worth considering Clifton’s personal politics, especially her involvement in the Civil Rights and Women’s movements of the 1960s and 1970s. This line echoes the struggles of white women and African Americans in their fight for justice. “maybe i should have ignored the bowl in me / burning to be filled.” The image of the empty bowl waiting to be filled is a vivid one, suggestive of many things: a thirst for knowledge, a desire to succeed and overcome obstacles, and a passion for creativity and self-expression.

In many ways, this is a poem about history — the history humankind carries in the struggle forward. As the speaker questions herself, repeating “maybe i should have wanted less,” she is recalling her history. To celebrate history is important for all people, but it is especially important for minority groups and white women, who still face significant barriers in many cultures. In other words, there is strength in remembering where one started.

Critically acclaimed novelist and essayist Alice Walker writes about this in her landmark collection of essays entitled In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. She describes teaching a group of under-privileged black women and struggling with this issue of valuing history: “How do you make them appreciate their own endurance, creativity, incredible loveliness of spirit? It should have been as simple as handing them a mirror, but it was not. How do you show a connection between past and present?” Clifton uses the extended metaphor of climbing to show a connection between past and present. She does not place the speaker in the poem alone on the rope; instead, she situates her within a community and a larger context. The struggle for freedom and for equal treatment and access to resources is more than an individual struggle; rather, it is a collective one.

“Climbing” is also a poem about ageing. Clifton is not a young woman when she writes this poem. It was included in a collection of poems entitled The Book of Light, published in 1993. (Clifton was born in 1936.) The words are not those of a young woman; instead, they are those of a woman who has lived several decades, whose life has followed a path and taken unexpected twists and turns, a woman who possesses the wisdom that comes along with a life well-lived. In the final lines of the poem, the speaker is looking toward something as she takes notice of her fellow climber: “the woman passes the notch in the rope marked Sixty.”

It is worth noting that in the entire poem, “Sixty” is the only word capitalized, which makes it pop off the page. Clearly, Clifton is trying to emphasize turning sixty as a major milestone; she seems to approach it with both longing and apprehension. The two views on ageing are contradictory, yet intricately related. Simplistically speaking, each year older is another year of learning and wisdom to tack onto one’s “resume” of life. But by the same token, each year lived also brings one closer to death, leading to careful introspection, which, in turn, brings more wisdom.

Ultimately, the speaker in “Climbing” embraces the idea of aging. The last line of the poem confirms this: “i rise toward it, struggling, / hand over hungry hand.” The speaker is rising toward the future with no regrets. The shades of self-doubt melt away in this final declaration. Her history has been one of struggle, and she has no intention of giving up the fight now. This final image of the hungry hand is reminiscent of the image of the bowl inside, “burning to be filled.” The speaker’s bowl is not yet filled. This is not, however, a bad thing. This desire for fulfillment is the very thing that keeps the speaker constantly pushing forward, constantly climbing. To fight injustice, to demand change, and to live a life one can proud of when one dies is no easy task, but, as this poem points out, it is well worth the struggle.

Source: Judi Ketteler, Critical Essay on “Climbing,” in Poetry for Students, The Gale Group, 2002.

“‘The strong sense of general disappointment coupled with the sinking suspicion that one’s life has missed the mark strikes responsive chords in many readers.’”