"Good Times" by Lucille Clifton

The speaker of Lucille Clifton's poem Good Times is a little black child reflecting on the things that make her life good. The wording of the poem is juvenile and uses improper English with no capitalization. This makes it more appealing because it seems like a truly sincere experience that she is describing. The fact that the good times the child speaks of are having electricity and paid bills, and the family being together also add greatly to the sincerity in the poem. Clifton uses repetition throughout the poem with using 'good times' multiple times at the end of each stanza, and using 'and' to begin most sentences of each stanza. This makes the speaker more evident, because children tend to tell stories in much more of a "and this and that and this" way, which is how this poem is formed.

My personal interpretation of this poem is that is one which shows not to take things for granted in a very clever way. Clifton points out all the very small things that make the good times happen for the speaker of this poem. Most of the things are hardly ever even considered, let alone the sole purpose of happiness. For example, "and the lights is back on" shows how only having electricity is enough to make her day better, whereas for most people electricity is just considered a given on a daily basis, and hardly ever thought about at all.

The way Clifton writes Good Times is very effective and well thought out, and had it been written from an adults perspective in perfect english it would not have been nearly as impacting as it was.