Blessing the Boats

Like many of Clifton’s poems, “blessing the boats” is short but dense. It relies on metaphors, and each metaphor may have several nuanced interpretations. Beginning with the title “blessing the boats”, the speaker sets up an immediate intention. The poem is about blessing, but it is not totally clear what the boats are. She uses boats in the plural. The poem moves on to use the pronoun “our” (Line 3) and “you” (Line 4) rather than “I.” Clifton is drawing a circle that encompasses multiple people, including herself, the reader, and perhaps others who are not specifically named. This makes the “blessing” available to everyone who reads it and not to anyone in particular. Next, “boats,” as plural suggests that she is going beyond her own “boat” to encompass multiple boats. Presumably the boats may be a metaphor for the body or for a life. In their most rudimentary form, a boat is a vessel that crosses water and often carries life or lives aboard. It would make sense that in this case the speaker is using “boats” as a metaphor for a body but also for something more than the mere physical form of a person.