Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton was an American poet, writer, and educator from New York. Common topics in her poetry include the celebration of her African American heritage, and feminist themes, with particular emphasis on the female body.She was the first person in her family to finish high school and attend college. She started Howard University on scholarship as a drama major but lost the scholarship two years later.Thus began her writing career.Good Times, her first book of poems, was published in 1969. She has since been nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and has been honored as Maryland's Poet Laureate. Ms. Clifton's foray into writing for children began with Some of the Days of Everett Anderson, published in 1970.In 1976, Generations: A Memoir was published. In 2000, she won the National Book Award for Poetry, for her work "Poems Seven".From 1985 to 1989, Clifton was a professor of literature and creative writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She was Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary's College of Maryland. From 1995 to 1999, she was a visiting professor at Columbia University. In 2006, she was a fellow at Dartmouth College.Clifton received the Robert Frost Medal for lifetime achievement posthumously, from the Poetry Society of America.
Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000
Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton, one of America's most important and distinguished poets, employs brilliantly honed language, stunning images, and sharp rhythms to address the whole of human experience. Hers is a poetry that is passionate and wise, not afraid to confront our most salient issues.
"Although her work is often spare and simple, it is always beautifully and painstakingly crafted into poems that tell the truth, poems that insist on residing within the reader, poems by a poet who seeks and achieves the ability to be a vehicle for those who may not otherwise speak." —Web Del Sol Review of Books
Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980 (American Poets Continuum)
Lucille Clifton
Finalist for the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry A landmark collection by one of America's major black poets, Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980 includes all of Lucille Clifton's first four published collections of extraordinary vibrant poetry— Good Times, Good News About the Earth, An Ordinary Woman, and Two-Headed Woman —as well as her haunting prose memoir, Generations.
Generations: A memoir
Lucille Clifton
Buffalo. A father's funeral. Memory. And Luclle Clifton merges her formidable weapons of poetry with the powerr of her prose, giving us a memoir of stark and profound beauty. Her story focuses on the lives of Caroline, "born among the Dahomey people in 1822," who walked North from New Orleans to Virginia in 1830 when she was eight years old; Lucy, the first black woman to be hanged in Virginia; and Gene, born with a withered arm, the son of a Yankee carpetbagger and the author's grandmother. Lucille Clifton tells us about the death of her father and mother and all that life and love and triumph that came before and remains even now. "I look at my husband," writes Ms. Clifton, "and our six children and I feel the Dahomey women gathering in my bones." Ms. Clifton's poetry has been called "lean, hard and graceful." But there are no accurate adjectives to describe her prose. Let's just say perfect.
Quilting: Poems 1987-1990 (American Poets Continuum Series, Vol. 21)
Lucille Clifton
Brilliantly honed language, sharp rhythms and striking syntax empower Lucille Clifton's personal and artistic odyssey. Hers is poetry of birth, death, children, community, history, sexuality and spirituality, and she addresses these themes with passion, humor, anger and spiritual awe.
The Book of Light
Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton was born in Depew, New York in 1936, and educated at the State University of New York at Fredonia and at Howard University. Her awards include the Juniper Prize for Poetry, two nominations for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, an Emmy Award from the American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has taught at the University of California at Santa Cruz and American University in Washington, D.C. and is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Marys College of Maryland.
"In the extraordinary work of The Book of Light she [Clifton] flies higher and strikes deeper than ever. Poem after poem exhilarates and inspires awe at the manifestation of such artistic and spiritual power…One of the most authentic and profound living American poets."—Denise Levertov
"Clifton’s latest collection clearly demonstrates why she was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. These poems contain all the simplicity and grace readers have come to expect from her work."— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Other titles by Lucille Clifton from
Blessing the New and Selected Poems 1988-2000 (BOA Editions), 1-880238-88-8 PB • 1-880238-87-X HC
Good Woman (BOA Editions), 0-918526-59-0 PB
Next (BOA Editions), 0-918526-61-2 PB
Quilting (BOA Editions), 0-918526-81-7 PB
terrible stories (BOA Editions), 1-880238-37-3 PB • 1-880238-36-5 HC
Next: New Poems (American Poets Continuum)
Lucille Clifton
Finalist, 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. "Clifton mythologizes that is, she illuminated her surroundings and history from within in a way that casts light on much beyond."-- The Women's Review of Books
The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010
Lucille Clifton
"The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 may be the most important book of poetry to appear in years."--Publishers Weekly
"All poetry readers will want to own this book; almost everything is in it."--Publishers Weekly
"If you only read one poetry book in 2012, The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton ought to be it."—NPR
"The 'Collected Clifton' is a gift, not just for her fans...but for all of us."--The Washington Post
"The love readers feel for Lucille Clifton—both the woman and her poetry—is constant and deeply felt. The lines that surface most frequently in praise of her work and her person are moving declarations of racial pride, courage, steadfastness."—Toni Morrison, from the Foreword
The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965�2010 combines all eleven of Lucille Clifton's published collections with more than fifty previously unpublished poems. The unpublished poems feature early poems from 1965�1969, a collection-in-progress titled the book of days (2008), and a poignant selection of final poems. An insightful foreword by Nobel Prize�winning author Toni Morrison and comprehensive afterword by noted poet Kevin Young frames Clifton's lifetime body of work, providing the definitive statement about this major America poet's career.
On February 13, 2010, the poetry world lost one of its most distinguished members with the passing of Lucille Clifton. In the last year of her life, she was named the first African American woman to receive the $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize honoring a US poet whose "lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition," and was posthumously awarded the Robert Frost Medal for lifetime achievement from the Poetry Society of America.
"mother-tongue: to man-kind" (from the unpublished the book of days):
all that I am asking isthat you see me as somethingmore than a common occurrence,more than a woman in her ordinary skin.
How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton
Edited with a Foreword by Aracelis Girmay, How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton celebrates famous poems and shines light on lesser-known poems by poet―and national treasure―Lucille Clifton (1936–2010).
Lucille Clifton’s poetry defined strength through adversity focusing particularly on African-American experience and family life. Clifton’s poems were widely celebrated during her lifetime, and she received wide acclaim for her work including the National Book Award, the Robert Frost Medal, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Her poems continue to inspire a new generation of readers and writers in the 21st century.
In How to Carry Water, formidable younger poet Aracelis Girmay (winner of the Whiting Award, GLCA Award, and the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award) introduces a selection of Clifton’s work that is simultaneously timeless and fitting for today’s tumultuous social and political moment.
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