"Love," "grace," "mystery," "survive," "strong," "good" and "wise"—these almost ineffectual words blur too much of Lucille Clifton's new book with the endearing title "An Ordinary Woman"; but when this "ordinary woman" turns to Kali, who presides over the bloodier poems, the words rise and tug at their subjects…. Clifton's poems on herself and her mother are items from a continuing story of mothers and daughters that is only now just beginning to be told in verse (and may turn out to be as interesting as the old story of fathers and sons)…. Memories rise up of a conflict no less strong for being gently told…. More bluntly than other recent poets, Clifton puts into raw lines the peculiar body and feeling of daily female life, so inimical to ideology, "ideas," social "thought" and even the art of words:

                 Sometimes
                 the whole world of women
                 seems a landscape of
                 red blood and things
                 that need healing,
                 the fears all
                 fears of the flesh;
                 will it open
                 or close
                 will it scar or
                 keep bleeding
                 will it live
                 will it live
                 will it live and
                 will he murder it or
                 marry it.

These surgical alternatives, repelling embellishment, are yet undeniable. But they are hostile to the whole impulse of elaboration which is the launching of a work of art (however it may ultimately choose the spare and the plain). Will it live? Will he marry me? He loves me, he loves me not. Impaled on the basic, Clifton recalls for us those bare places we have all waited as "ordinary women," with no choices but yes or no, no art, no grace, no words, no reprieve. (pp. 5, 29)