AN ORDINARY WOMAN

Poetry in a minor key, out of the black ghetto by a woman entering middle age who, like so many of her sisters, ""had expected more than this,"" more than just survival, continuance, and a slow turning first into motherhood, then grandmotherhood. The sense of kinship with her family, her sex and her race is the emotional mainstay of this ""ordinary"" poet who senses the terror and loneliness behind the plain face and safe habits of her life. Clifton's complaints are short, personal, ambivalent, really more piqued and hurt than angry and they are resolved -- or at least allayed -- by a hopeful imperative: ""let the war be won/ let love be/ at the end."" Genuine, but tepid.