See and hear Lucille Clifton read her fun poem, ““homage to my hips.”
“these hips are big hips”
Lucille Clifton’s “homage to my hips” celebrates a proud woman who is equally proud of her hips. She opens by describing her hips as “big hips: “these hips are big hips.” If this speaker has been the butt of jokes about having big hips, she is now turning that joke on the jokester.
Then she continues describing the importance of those big hips. They require space, a fact that implies that the jokester can just move out of her way, and give her space “to / move around in.” She and her big hips do not need to take guff from those small minds that would make fun of her big impressive hips.
Large Mindedness
The speaker says her hips will not “fit into little / petty places.” She and her hips require large-mindedness, not the pettiness that would limit her mind or her body. She and her big hips move in an expansive universe of large, profouond ideas and significance that transcends the little ideas of petty thinkers like the minds that would call a big mama an unkind name because of the size of her hips.
She says, “these hips / are free hips / they don’t like to be held back.” The speaker and her big expansive hips will tread any path that can accommodate their cosmic nature. She and her hips “have never been enslaved.” The speaker boasts of a courage that allows her to maintain her freedom and avoid the chains of mediocrity that would enslave lesser minds.
There is magic in those big hips
Her hips “go where they want to go” and “they do what they want to do.” She is not deterred from achieving her goals by petty-thinking, limited, shallow minds who admire only bodies and not expansive minds. She and her hips can travel far and wide and earn their way to achievement and glory.
Then the speaker turns a bit risqué by implying that her big hips are even sexy, because they are able to “put a spell on a man and / spin him like a top!” So that even those who would yield to the possibility that a big fat woman can rise above pettiness and not allow herself to be enslaved can understand that not only is she a mental giant, but those big hips can also work like “magic” in attracting a lover, if she so desires.
