Lucille Clifton: Drafting and Technique in Three Poems on Cancer Farah Charania College

The evolution of Leukemia as a dream/ritual is subtle; however, Lucille Clifton shows the importance of every single word through her tedious drafting. Lucille Clifton — in Leukemia as a dream/ritual — translates the pain of cancer into the English language. In fact, across three poems, Clifton shows through her drafts that the same words can resonate differently based on the form. On the other hand, Clifton has precisely changed words here and there to create different impacts.

When looking at the four drafts, it is immediately evident that there is not much change between them. In the first draft, the “small girl sits at the foot of [the] bed”; in the next drafts, the “small girls stands at the foot of [the] bed. It is worth considering why Clifton would make such a change. The shift from “sits” to “stands” implies that the small girl is serious. Because she is standing, there must be purpose in her presence. Clifton also makes changes within the form to convey the serious tone of the poem. In the first draft, full sentences were drawn out over multiple lines; there was not much pausing when reading it straight through. From the second draft on, Clifton only ends a line with the end of the thought. Therefore, the reader...