An Explanation of “Forgiving My Father” When I first read “Forgiving My Father” by Lucille Clifton, I was confused about the meaning of the poem. I thought it would be about her forgiving her father, but I never noticed that she actually forgave her father. As I analyzed the overall message, diction, and structure of “forgive my father,” I realized that she never forgave her father. Even though she tried to forgive him, there was too much hatred and eventually she walked away from his grave. The diction used by Clifton in the poem is very interesting. For example, Clifton never capitalizes a single word, not even in the title. This shows that she doesn't think the words are important enough to be emphasized, although the structure that strikes me most is the way she uses enjambments in lines thirteen and sixteen. Enjambments draw attention to what is being said in the verse in a thought-provoking way. For example, "you gave her everything you had", "all you had", points out to the reader that the father did not save some of the money he had earned for his daughter ( 14-16). Clifton also does not use a set meter or rhyme for "forgive my father." I believe she does this because poems with end rhymes draw readers' attention to the rhyme scheme and distract their attention from the intended purpose of the poem; Clifton doesn't want us to look for the next rhyme, she wants us to read the poem and think about the poem's deeper meaning. The reader discovers the true meaning of the poem when he notices the change in lines. The main reason is that I read the poem expecting to read about a woman who forgave her father for some wrongdoings he had done, but that's not what I think . taken from the poem. The poem begins by telling how the money had run out and they were living paycheck to paycheck. Then he says that the narrator's mother died at a very young age. This is demonstrated when in line six it is written: "my mother's hand opened in her early grave." This led the narrator to tell us that the father was an adulterer and that he and his wife had an unhappy marriage. The girl seemed to be trying to forgive her father for all this, but she could not. In line twenty-one, the poem moves from the woman trying to forgive her father to the question of why she is at the edge of his grave trying to forgive him. She realized that her father and mother were dead and knowing that could change that. It seems to me that she never forgave her father for what he did, but she wishes she had done it when he was still