What is the tone of "homage to my hips," and what words and devices does Clifton use to create it? How does poetic form fit the content?

Tone refers to the way the author feels about the subject matter of his or her text. Here, Clifton seems to employ an admiring, or even celebratory, tone. She portrays the speaker as confident and self-aware. The speaker knows that she is beautiful, valuable, "mighty," and even "magic." She is empowered and presented as a character who revels in her independence and freedom: her "hips have never been enslaved," and "they go where they want to go." Clifton seems to admire this woman for her confidence and charisma, and she is celebrating her empowerment right alongside her. For this reason, one might even say that the tone of the poem feels jubilant. Because Clifton so clearly admires this proud female speaker, it seems that we are meant to embrace and celebrate her, too.

Lucille Clifton's "homage to my hips" is celebratory and defiant in tone. The poem focuses on "space" and the space the speaker's "big hips" have claimed for themselves. It defies the idea that hips should be confined into "little petty places" and protests this confinement with words such as "free," "mighty," and "magic." The speaker's hips are not "held back" or "enslaved," and the prominent position of the hips is reflected by the way repetition of the phrase "these hips" accords them a privileged position within the poem itself.
The structure of this poem is carefully crafted such that the shape of the words on the page bells out into a curve, reaching its widest point on the line, "these hips have never been enslaved." The form of the poem visually represents the curve of the "free hips," unwilling to be "held back" into the "petty places" represented by the curtailed lines at the beginning of the poem. Rather, "these hips" take up all the space they need.