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The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010
"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Clifton 1965�2010 combines all eleven of Lucille Clifton's published collections with more than fifty previously unpublished poems. The unpublished poems feature early poems from 1965�1969, a collection-in-progress titled the book of days (2008), and a poignant selection of final poems.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"mother-tongue: to man-kind" (from the unpublished the book of days):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 is
that you see me as something
more than a common occurrence,
more than a woman in her ordinary skin.
"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 is
that you see me as something
more than a common occurrence,
more than a woman in her ordinary skin.
720 pages, Hardcover
First published August 28, 2012
222 people are currently reading
3634 people want to read
About the author
Lucille Clifton
82 books439 followersLucille 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.
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.
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February 2, 2025
‘today we are possible.’
‘Lucille is another word for light,’ wrote the great Toni Morrison in an essay on Lucille Clifton, ‘which is the soul of ‘enlightenment.’ And she knew it.’ Lucille Clifton is my absolute favorite poet. She is an immortal icon in the art form and just a delight to read and learn from. It is difficult to review a ‘collected works’ so I’d like to make this a celebration of her in general because her work is such a momentous achievement and gift. She is remarkable. Her works centers on empowering explorations of the Black experience and womanhood told through succinctly perfect poetry. Let’s take a moment to celebrate the life and legacy of Lucille Clifton, and what better way to begin than with the poem ‘won’t you celebrate with me’ from the collection The Book of Light:
won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
Lucille Clifton was born Thelma Lucille Sayles, in Depew, New York on June 27, 1936. She studied at Howard University before transferring to State University of New York at Fredonia. Here she was introduced to Fred Clifton, a philosophy professor who would become her husband, in 1958 by none other than Ishmael Reed as he was organizing a community Drama workshop in Buffalo. Both Lucille and Fred starred in Reed’s production of Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie.
Lucille had shown her poetry to Reed who enjoyed it so much he passed it along to his friend, the great Langston Hughes in 1966. Her work would be included in his anthology The Poetry Of The Negro, 1746-1970, which really kickstarted her career. Her first collection, Good Times, would go on to be included in the New York Time’s 10 Best Books of the Year. From here she would go on to a highly regarded and decorated career, having a double Pulitzer Prize nomination (the first poet to do so), served as the Poet Laureate of Maryland, won the Ruth Lily Poetry Prize in 2007 and was honored with a Robert Frost Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to poetry, Clifton wrote many children’s books, her Everett Anderson's Goodbye was given a Coretta Scott King Award in 1984. She would taught at many universities, including St. Mary’s College of Maryland, Colombia and Dartmouth. Sadly, Lucille Clifton passed away from cancer on February 13, 2010.
blessing the boats
(at St. Mary's)
may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that.
There is a powerful simplicity to a Lucille Clifton poem. She refrains from capitalization and there is never any excess in her work, just direct and perfectly constructed poetry that sings from the heart louder and more beautiful than all the choirs on earth. Poet Rita Dove once described Clifton’s poetry as as
‘Poetry is a matter of life, not just a matter of language.’
Much of her work centers Blackness and womanhood, examining the intersections between them in a way that speaks out proudly and confidently. ‘She sifts the history of African Americans for honor,’ write Toni Morrison, ‘she plumbs that history for justice...From humor to love or rage, Clifton’s poems elicit a visceral response.’ Clifton tackles topics of sexuality, gender and race as something to take pride in and to uplift others. ‘I come to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable,’ she once wrote, and she takes each topic head on to make her voice heard. In poems such as Homage to my Hair and Homage to my Hips, she speaks openly of the Black woman body as something holy:
homage to my hips
these hips are big hips
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!
She writes of the strength of Black women, but reminds us that this strength is something that was imposed on them for survival. ‘America made us heroines / not wives.’ she writes in the poem Black Women, ‘ we hid our ladyness / to save our lives.’ She consistently reminds us that Black women exist in a world controlled by white men and towards this she shakes a fist of liberation. She speaks of the ways she is targeted because she has the bravery to speak out, an act that is brave because the white population has made it dangerous.
i feel the reverberation
of myself
in white america
a black cat
in the belfry
hanging
and
ringing
(from white america)
There is a proud womanhood at work within her poetry that reminds us of how incredible a strong woman is in a world so set against her. Poems such as ‘wishes for sons’ from Next: New Poems demonstrates her wry humor as a method of devastating satire.
‘i wish them cramps.
i wish them a strange town
and the last tampon.
i wish them no 7-11.
i wish them one week early
and wearing a white skirt.
i wish them one week late.
later i wish them hot flashes
and clots like you
wouldn't believe. let the
flashes come when they
meet someone special.
let the clots come
when they want to.
let them think they have accepted
arrogance in the universe,
then bring them to gynecologists
not unlike themselves.
Motherhood, childbirth, and miscarriage all are granted heroic and mythical proportions in her work. There is a rightful rage directed towards the oppression of Black people, such as in the photograph: a lynching, or the promise that Black liberation will come and the fate of the obdurate white hegemony will be one of their own making, even opening this interpretation to one of climate justice:
‘the air
you have polluted
you will breathe
the waters
you have poisoned
you will drink’
She writes to give strength as a call-to-arms, to give comfort, and to leave those who disagree shaking in their shoes. It is a voice that is brave and bold, one that commands attention and respect.
‘...she opens herself
to the risk of flame and
walks toward an ocean
of days.’
(from new year)
Clifton plays with language in a clever way, often using mythological and biblical allusions to add an element of the epic to human nature. In her series of lucifer poetry, she subverts the idea of the devil by reclaiming him through his association with darkness/blackness.
‘i the only lucifer
light-bringer
created out of fire
illuminate i could
and so
illuminate i did.’
The poem plays with concepts of Adam and Eve, in which Eve speaks as a voice of truth in an active voice instead of as a passive, ‘treacherous’ image that patriarchal readings of the Bible have accustomed to readers. Though there is likely no better image of the divine and letting oneself go to fate than the lesson of the falling leaves:
the leaves believe
such letting go is love
such love is faith
such faith is grace
such grace is god
i agree with the leaves.
Clifton has great commentary on mortality, often reflecting on death such as the loss of her husband from cancer and her own struggles with breast cancer. ‘have we not been good children / did we not inherit the earth,’ she asks in 1994, speaking of her own cancer diagnosis. ‘to be born with breasts / you know how dangerous it is / to wear dark skin.’ she says earlier, confronting the health care disparity that harms the Black community. ‘this woman / this one precious, perishable kingdom’ she writes, looking death in the eye and acknowledging the fate that must befall us all.
‘you might as well answer the door, my child, the truth is furiously knocking.’
I first discovered Lucille Clifton 10 years back in college. Through a clerical error, my 400 level class--what it was meant to be has long been forgotten--was accidentally assigned to Women’s Studies of Modern African American Poetry. I thought something was off when I purchased my textbooks but I showed up the first day anyway. The first day we dove into Lucille Clifton and Audre Lorde and I was hooked. I had previously had an interest in poetry but not the language to describe it. After the first lecture the teacher pulled me aside, as I was not on her roster and was actually not supposed to be there but she encouraged me to remain in her course. There was a prerequisite I had not taken she said she would wave on the condition that I read the entirety of Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Lorde and have a conversation with her about it at the end of the course. This class changed my life forever. It was where I really learned to love poetry, especially as we wrote intense, weekly essays dissecting specific poems. For the final assignment we were given a topic at random to research poetry about and write a 15 page paper, I was assigned poetry about miscarriage. The heart of my paper centered around Clifton’s the lost baby poem
the time i dropped your almost body down
down to meet the waters under the city
and run one with the sewage to the sea
what did i know about waters rushing back
what did i know about drowning
or being drowned
you would have been born into winter
in the year of the disconnected gas
and no car we would have made the thin
walk over genesee hill into the canada wind
to watch you slip like ice into strangers’ hands
you would have fallen naked as snow into winter
if you were here i could tell you these
and some other things
if i am ever less than a mountain
for your definite brothers and sisters
let the rivers pour over my head
let the sea take me for a spiller
of seas let black men call me stranger
always for your never named sake
This poem has always stuck in my mind and I feel forever in debt to the way Lucille Clifton unlocked the language of poetry to me. It is my favorite art form and I have grown to love her work so much that I cannot think of poetry without immediately turning to her work.
‘Poems come out of wonder, not out of knowing’
If a collected works is daunting to you, I might recommend beginning with Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000, Clifton’s National Book Award winning selected works. She is a towering giant in American poetry and one of the most empowering and heartfelt poets you will ever encounter. I cannot recommend her more highly and I have a true, deep love and respect for her. I’d like to leave you with a video of one of my other favorite poets, Jericho Brown, talking about and reading a poem by Lucille Clifton: https://twitter.com/tmagazine/status/...
Do yourself a massive favor and read her work.
5/5
as the day arrives
with all its clumsy blessings
what we will become
waits in us like an ache.
‘Lucille is another word for light,’ wrote the great Toni Morrison in an essay on Lucille Clifton, ‘which is the soul of ‘enlightenment.’ And she knew it.’ Lucille Clifton is my absolute favorite poet. She is an immortal icon in the art form and just a delight to read and learn from. It is difficult to review a ‘collected works’ so I’d like to make this a celebration of her in general because her work is such a momentous achievement and gift. She is remarkable. Her works centers on empowering explorations of the Black experience and womanhood told through succinctly perfect poetry. Let’s take a moment to celebrate the life and legacy of Lucille Clifton, and what better way to begin than with the poem ‘won’t you celebrate with me’ from the collection The Book of Light:
won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
Lucille Clifton was born Thelma Lucille Sayles, in Depew, New York on June 27, 1936. She studied at Howard University before transferring to State University of New York at Fredonia. Here she was introduced to Fred Clifton, a philosophy professor who would become her husband, in 1958 by none other than Ishmael Reed as he was organizing a community Drama workshop in Buffalo. Both Lucille and Fred starred in Reed’s production of Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie.
Lucille had shown her poetry to Reed who enjoyed it so much he passed it along to his friend, the great Langston Hughes in 1966. Her work would be included in his anthology The Poetry Of The Negro, 1746-1970, which really kickstarted her career. Her first collection, Good Times, would go on to be included in the New York Time’s 10 Best Books of the Year. From here she would go on to a highly regarded and decorated career, having a double Pulitzer Prize nomination (the first poet to do so), served as the Poet Laureate of Maryland, won the Ruth Lily Poetry Prize in 2007 and was honored with a Robert Frost Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to poetry, Clifton wrote many children’s books, her Everett Anderson's Goodbye was given a Coretta Scott King Award in 1984. She would taught at many universities, including St. Mary’s College of Maryland, Colombia and Dartmouth. Sadly, Lucille Clifton passed away from cancer on February 13, 2010.
blessing the boats
(at St. Mary's)
may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that.
There is a powerful simplicity to a Lucille Clifton poem. She refrains from capitalization and there is never any excess in her work, just direct and perfectly constructed poetry that sings from the heart louder and more beautiful than all the choirs on earth. Poet Rita Dove once described Clifton’s poetry as as
‘Lucille Clifton’s poems are compact and self-sufficient...Her revelations then resemble the epiphanies of childhood and early adolescence, when one’s lack of preconceptions about the self allowed for brilliant slippage into the metaphysical, a glimpse into an egoless, utterly thingful and serene world.’In such a small space, Clifton is able to say so much and say it so memorably. ‘I don’t go get a poem,’ Clifton said about her writing process, ‘it calls me and I accept it.’ This idea of channeling a poem is evident in her work, that speaks from so deep down in the soul it is as if magic. Because if there is anything magical in this world, it is the poetry of Lucille Clifton.
‘Poetry is a matter of life, not just a matter of language.’
Much of her work centers Blackness and womanhood, examining the intersections between them in a way that speaks out proudly and confidently. ‘She sifts the history of African Americans for honor,’ write Toni Morrison, ‘she plumbs that history for justice...From humor to love or rage, Clifton’s poems elicit a visceral response.’ Clifton tackles topics of sexuality, gender and race as something to take pride in and to uplift others. ‘I come to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable,’ she once wrote, and she takes each topic head on to make her voice heard. In poems such as Homage to my Hair and Homage to my Hips, she speaks openly of the Black woman body as something holy:
homage to my hips
these hips are big hips
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top!
She writes of the strength of Black women, but reminds us that this strength is something that was imposed on them for survival. ‘America made us heroines / not wives.’ she writes in the poem Black Women, ‘ we hid our ladyness / to save our lives.’ She consistently reminds us that Black women exist in a world controlled by white men and towards this she shakes a fist of liberation. She speaks of the ways she is targeted because she has the bravery to speak out, an act that is brave because the white population has made it dangerous.
i feel the reverberation
of myself
in white america
a black cat
in the belfry
hanging
and
ringing
(from white america)
There is a proud womanhood at work within her poetry that reminds us of how incredible a strong woman is in a world so set against her. Poems such as ‘wishes for sons’ from Next: New Poems demonstrates her wry humor as a method of devastating satire.
‘i wish them cramps.
i wish them a strange town
and the last tampon.
i wish them no 7-11.
i wish them one week early
and wearing a white skirt.
i wish them one week late.
later i wish them hot flashes
and clots like you
wouldn't believe. let the
flashes come when they
meet someone special.
let the clots come
when they want to.
let them think they have accepted
arrogance in the universe,
then bring them to gynecologists
not unlike themselves.
Motherhood, childbirth, and miscarriage all are granted heroic and mythical proportions in her work. There is a rightful rage directed towards the oppression of Black people, such as in the photograph: a lynching, or the promise that Black liberation will come and the fate of the obdurate white hegemony will be one of their own making, even opening this interpretation to one of climate justice:
‘the air
you have polluted
you will breathe
the waters
you have poisoned
you will drink’
She writes to give strength as a call-to-arms, to give comfort, and to leave those who disagree shaking in their shoes. It is a voice that is brave and bold, one that commands attention and respect.
‘...she opens herself
to the risk of flame and
walks toward an ocean
of days.’
(from new year)
Clifton plays with language in a clever way, often using mythological and biblical allusions to add an element of the epic to human nature. In her series of lucifer poetry, she subverts the idea of the devil by reclaiming him through his association with darkness/blackness.
‘i the only lucifer
light-bringer
created out of fire
illuminate i could
and so
illuminate i did.’
The poem plays with concepts of Adam and Eve, in which Eve speaks as a voice of truth in an active voice instead of as a passive, ‘treacherous’ image that patriarchal readings of the Bible have accustomed to readers. Though there is likely no better image of the divine and letting oneself go to fate than the lesson of the falling leaves:
the leaves believe
such letting go is love
such love is faith
such faith is grace
such grace is god
i agree with the leaves.
Clifton has great commentary on mortality, often reflecting on death such as the loss of her husband from cancer and her own struggles with breast cancer. ‘have we not been good children / did we not inherit the earth,’ she asks in 1994, speaking of her own cancer diagnosis. ‘to be born with breasts / you know how dangerous it is / to wear dark skin.’ she says earlier, confronting the health care disparity that harms the Black community. ‘this woman / this one precious, perishable kingdom’ she writes, looking death in the eye and acknowledging the fate that must befall us all.
‘you might as well answer the door, my child, the truth is furiously knocking.’
I first discovered Lucille Clifton 10 years back in college. Through a clerical error, my 400 level class--what it was meant to be has long been forgotten--was accidentally assigned to Women’s Studies of Modern African American Poetry. I thought something was off when I purchased my textbooks but I showed up the first day anyway. The first day we dove into Lucille Clifton and Audre Lorde and I was hooked. I had previously had an interest in poetry but not the language to describe it. After the first lecture the teacher pulled me aside, as I was not on her roster and was actually not supposed to be there but she encouraged me to remain in her course. There was a prerequisite I had not taken she said she would wave on the condition that I read the entirety of Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Lorde and have a conversation with her about it at the end of the course. This class changed my life forever. It was where I really learned to love poetry, especially as we wrote intense, weekly essays dissecting specific poems. For the final assignment we were given a topic at random to research poetry about and write a 15 page paper, I was assigned poetry about miscarriage. The heart of my paper centered around Clifton’s the lost baby poem
the time i dropped your almost body down
down to meet the waters under the city
and run one with the sewage to the sea
what did i know about waters rushing back
what did i know about drowning
or being drowned
you would have been born into winter
in the year of the disconnected gas
and no car we would have made the thin
walk over genesee hill into the canada wind
to watch you slip like ice into strangers’ hands
you would have fallen naked as snow into winter
if you were here i could tell you these
and some other things
if i am ever less than a mountain
for your definite brothers and sisters
let the rivers pour over my head
let the sea take me for a spiller
of seas let black men call me stranger
always for your never named sake
This poem has always stuck in my mind and I feel forever in debt to the way Lucille Clifton unlocked the language of poetry to me. It is my favorite art form and I have grown to love her work so much that I cannot think of poetry without immediately turning to her work.
‘Poems come out of wonder, not out of knowing’
If a collected works is daunting to you, I might recommend beginning with Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000, Clifton’s National Book Award winning selected works. She is a towering giant in American poetry and one of the most empowering and heartfelt poets you will ever encounter. I cannot recommend her more highly and I have a true, deep love and respect for her. I’d like to leave you with a video of one of my other favorite poets, Jericho Brown, talking about and reading a poem by Lucille Clifton: https://twitter.com/tmagazine/status/...
Do yourself a massive favor and read her work.
5/5
as the day arrives
with all its clumsy blessings
what we will become
waits in us like an ache.
Want to read
September 11, 2012"What they call you is one thing.
What you answer to is something else."
One of my favorite poets and one of our best.
What you answer to is something else."
One of my favorite poets and one of our best.
March 6, 2025
Below is my non review of a review, written with a tired mind and unedited before falling asleep...
I pulled this collection off my shelf and re-read each poem aloud to myself a little at a time until I finished. These poems are delightful in Clifton's own signature way. She could make a concrete statue laugh or cry, I'm almost certain of it.
Yes, I know this is supposed to be a book review, but suffice to say Lucille Clifton was a legend for a reason. If poetry isn't your jam, then give this a try anyway and marvel at the imagery, the tone, the magic of marvelous similes and metaphors.
Lucille Clifton was one heck of a smart, strong, powerhouse of a Black female poet. She was respected in various circles, and those circles have a ripple effect. I think in times of frustration and distress we are blessed to have poems to soothe us, move us, anger us, prod us into understanding the power of one voice.
I haven't seen enough great reviews for Black poets on Goodreads lately. That doesn't mean plenty of people aren't reading poetry. I'm just taking a moment to say that perhaps we could all do with more poetry in our literary diets. We readers aren't required to make heads or tails of all poems, or to even understand "the meaning behind the meaning behind the meaning" as Lucille Clifton used to joke about. Reading a beautiful poem pulls at the invisible strings of our soul-spirits, like listening to a beautiful song, or standing in front of a remarkable painting that makes us feel grateful to be alive.
As we roll into the first week of March, it's my hope that we are all mindful of protecting all the voices put to paper that have made a difference in our lives.
I'll try to tie this up so it doesn't read like unnecessary drivel. Lucille Clifton really is worth checking out if you're looking for a little something to put on the bedside table and read a bit every day.
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
I pulled this collection off my shelf and re-read each poem aloud to myself a little at a time until I finished. These poems are delightful in Clifton's own signature way. She could make a concrete statue laugh or cry, I'm almost certain of it.
Yes, I know this is supposed to be a book review, but suffice to say Lucille Clifton was a legend for a reason. If poetry isn't your jam, then give this a try anyway and marvel at the imagery, the tone, the magic of marvelous similes and metaphors.
Lucille Clifton was one heck of a smart, strong, powerhouse of a Black female poet. She was respected in various circles, and those circles have a ripple effect. I think in times of frustration and distress we are blessed to have poems to soothe us, move us, anger us, prod us into understanding the power of one voice.
I haven't seen enough great reviews for Black poets on Goodreads lately. That doesn't mean plenty of people aren't reading poetry. I'm just taking a moment to say that perhaps we could all do with more poetry in our literary diets. We readers aren't required to make heads or tails of all poems, or to even understand "the meaning behind the meaning behind the meaning" as Lucille Clifton used to joke about. Reading a beautiful poem pulls at the invisible strings of our soul-spirits, like listening to a beautiful song, or standing in front of a remarkable painting that makes us feel grateful to be alive.
As we roll into the first week of March, it's my hope that we are all mindful of protecting all the voices put to paper that have made a difference in our lives.
I'll try to tie this up so it doesn't read like unnecessary drivel. Lucille Clifton really is worth checking out if you're looking for a little something to put on the bedside table and read a bit every day.
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
October 20, 2014
I am not actually FINISHED reading this book.. It's too big, too much treasure, and I haven't been reading the pages chronologically. I just love her poetry very much.
September 30, 2013
I finished this massive (770p.!) book with massive gratitude for the life and craft (crafty life? lively craft?) of Lucille Clifton. I mourn her passing (d. 2010 in Balto). I celebrate her genius. (And I honor Kevin Young and Michael Glaser for editing this volume.)
Here is one of her heretofore uncollected poems:
birth-day
today we are possible.
the morning, green and laundry-sweet,
opens itself and we enter
blind and mewling.
everything waits for us:
the snow kingdom
sparking and silent
in its glacial cap,
the cane fields
shining and sweet
in the sun-drenched south.
as the day arrives
with all its clumsy blessings
what we will become
waits in us like an ache.
Here is one of her heretofore uncollected poems:
birth-day
today we are possible.
the morning, green and laundry-sweet,
opens itself and we enter
blind and mewling.
everything waits for us:
the snow kingdom
sparking and silent
in its glacial cap,
the cane fields
shining and sweet
in the sun-drenched south.
as the day arrives
with all its clumsy blessings
what we will become
waits in us like an ache.
May 6, 2013
Having all these poems in a single volume is a real gift. Inevitably, they aren't all top quality; but it's interesting to see the evolution of Lucille Clifton's themes and techniques across her career. Many of the early poems focus on black identity, or honor figures in the Civil Rights or Black Power movements. Some of the poems I found most moving (but completely unsentimental) are those from her middle period, especially around the death of her husband in 1984 (collected in Next, published in 1987) and battles with cancer (late 1980s, 1990s).
Thankfully, the volume includes an illuminating forward by Toni Morrison and a critical essay by Kevin Young. Clifton's poetry blends larger concerns about identity and social justice with intensely personal perspectives, so it really helps to understand details of her life and career. For example, Clifton felt she regularly communed with her deceased mother, and a number of poems to her mother make a great deal more sense if you read them as part of a literal rather than metaphorical conversation. The polydactyly that runs in Clifton's family also surfaces again and again in the poems. Her sixth fingers were surgically removed as a child, and sometimes what surfaces is her own loss; at other times, she alludes to the possibility of extra fingers showing up among her descendents, as a symbol of her bloodline and family identity.
Taken individually, Clifton's poems are moving, haunting, and sometimes funny. Packaged together like this, the poems reflect Clifton's powerful personality and lay bare agonizing or erotic impulses, sketching raw emotions with precise technical skill.
Thankfully, the volume includes an illuminating forward by Toni Morrison and a critical essay by Kevin Young. Clifton's poetry blends larger concerns about identity and social justice with intensely personal perspectives, so it really helps to understand details of her life and career. For example, Clifton felt she regularly communed with her deceased mother, and a number of poems to her mother make a great deal more sense if you read them as part of a literal rather than metaphorical conversation. The polydactyly that runs in Clifton's family also surfaces again and again in the poems. Her sixth fingers were surgically removed as a child, and sometimes what surfaces is her own loss; at other times, she alludes to the possibility of extra fingers showing up among her descendents, as a symbol of her bloodline and family identity.
Taken individually, Clifton's poems are moving, haunting, and sometimes funny. Packaged together like this, the poems reflect Clifton's powerful personality and lay bare agonizing or erotic impulses, sketching raw emotions with precise technical skill.
March 28, 2013
Matthew Dickman (Poetry Editor): My favorite book I’ve read this month is The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton edited by Kevin Young and Michael S. Glaser (with an intro by Toni Morrison). To read this book is to know how love feels, it’s an experience of the heart and mind, of the beauty of language and the celebration of all that is human, including what hurts about being human. The book contains over 700 pages of poetry which is the right size for a poet who affected so many lives.
March 19, 2018
I'm glad I took my time with this collection. Lucille Clifton is a poet I will return to again and again to find truth, wisdom, and sass.
November 20, 2018
This if the first time I've read such a large poetry collection, and I love having the opportunity to study a poet through their entire body of work. Because of this luxury, I can see how much of Clifton's work is tied to identity, racism, feminism, religion, intersectionality, disease, grief, abandonment, etc. in a large scale. It was also a fun experience seeing certain images appear in the text again and again (e.g. 12 fingers). The collection is organized chronologically, which helps tracking how certain themes, images, artistic choices develop in her poems (and her life). I felt like a friggin' literary detective or something.
I generally prefer longer lines and less disruptive line breaks, so there were moments in reading this collection where I felt a little underwhelmed by some of Clifton's choices. But, I understand that is just a style choice and I tried to be less critical than I have been with other poets. Her word choice and diction is consistently amazing and the connections she makes in her life are inspiring!
Just for funsiez, I've listed my top 10 favorite poems from the collection (in chronological order) for reference if someone wanted to look at some of her solid poems without reading the 700+ pages from this collection.
1) the lost baby poem
2) the raising of lazarus
3) light
4) at last we killed the roaches
5) the thirty eighth year
6) at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, north carolina, 1989
7) white lady
8) brothers
9) 1994
10) grief
Great collection and great legacy!
I generally prefer longer lines and less disruptive line breaks, so there were moments in reading this collection where I felt a little underwhelmed by some of Clifton's choices. But, I understand that is just a style choice and I tried to be less critical than I have been with other poets. Her word choice and diction is consistently amazing and the connections she makes in her life are inspiring!
Just for funsiez, I've listed my top 10 favorite poems from the collection (in chronological order) for reference if someone wanted to look at some of her solid poems without reading the 700+ pages from this collection.
1) the lost baby poem
2) the raising of lazarus
3) light
4) at last we killed the roaches
5) the thirty eighth year
6) at the cemetery, walnut grove plantation, north carolina, 1989
7) white lady
8) brothers
9) 1994
10) grief
Great collection and great legacy!
October 16, 2012
What a handsome collection of poetry! BOA editions went all out with this well-made and superbly edited (Kevin Young) volume. The introduction by Toni Morrison sets the stage for a new reading and criticism of Clifton's work: less "big mama/big sister of racial reassurance and self-empowerment" and more "references to her intellect, imagination, scholarship, or her risk taking manipulation of language."
Her religious poems are hair-raising. Lucifer converses with God: "let us rest here a time/like two old brothers/ who watched it happen and wondered/ what it meant." Her John says: "Someone coming in blackness/ like a star/ and the world be a great bush/ on his head/ and his eyes be fire/in the city/ and his mouth be true as time." Moses is "an old man/ leaving slavery/ home is burning in me/ like a bush/ God got his eye on."
There are dozens are masterpieces in this book, and it's all interesting.
Morrison: "Can any one of us not shiver with the tenderness in "miss rosie"?
miss rosie
when I watch you
wrapped up like garbage
sitting, surrounded by the smell
of too old potato peels
or
when I watch you
in your old man's shoes
with the little toe cut out
sitting, waiting for your mind
like next week's grocery
I say
when I watch you
you wet brown bag of a woman
who used to be the best looking gal in georgia
used to be called the Georgia Rose
I stand up
through your destruction
I stand up
Her religious poems are hair-raising. Lucifer converses with God: "let us rest here a time/like two old brothers/ who watched it happen and wondered/ what it meant." Her John says: "Someone coming in blackness/ like a star/ and the world be a great bush/ on his head/ and his eyes be fire/in the city/ and his mouth be true as time." Moses is "an old man/ leaving slavery/ home is burning in me/ like a bush/ God got his eye on."
There are dozens are masterpieces in this book, and it's all interesting.
Morrison: "Can any one of us not shiver with the tenderness in "miss rosie"?
miss rosie
when I watch you
wrapped up like garbage
sitting, surrounded by the smell
of too old potato peels
or
when I watch you
in your old man's shoes
with the little toe cut out
sitting, waiting for your mind
like next week's grocery
I say
when I watch you
you wet brown bag of a woman
who used to be the best looking gal in georgia
used to be called the Georgia Rose
I stand up
through your destruction
I stand up
November 10, 2012
I knew what a powerhouse Clifton is -- and this book confirms it, with an introduction by Toni Morrison and afterword by Kevin Young. There is a final selection of poems that are not published anywhere else. It is wonderful to have everything in one volume. The joy of a book like this, is to go back and re-read and let favorites sink deep under your skin. As Merwin says, "it is not possible for me to speak about Lucille Clifton without feeling love for her." Her use of "ordinary words we go on using every day" is often extraordinary, bringing to light new ways of understanding.
Yes, "Lucille is another word for light, which is the soul of 'enlightenment'. And she knew it." (Morrison's concluding sentence.)
Yes, "Lucille is another word for light, which is the soul of 'enlightenment'. And she knew it." (Morrison's concluding sentence.)
August 19, 2022
a whopper, a 700+ page corker and the reason why i'm 14 books behind my 2022 goal. i had to take my time with lucille. i had to slow down and let myself gasp and scream and cackle over each line i fell for because you cannot rush love like this. i stopped midway and wrote poems with her and from her that made their way into journals. i am still in conversation with her when i write my work, she's joined the ranks of other writers like toni who i talk to when i work. her tone feeds me, she's so unafraid of the i and i love her for it as much as i love her concision and form. i love her very much and have started to memorise my favourites for recitation. this book has changed my craft for the better and her collected poems have a forever home on my shelves and in my mouth.
January 18, 2016
Might have taken me a bit to get through Lucille's collected works, but I kept coming back to her all the same. There's a familiarity here that's hard to articulate, but also resonates as you read each poem. Like all the greats, her poems are a search for meaning while at the same time helping those that read each line find some meaning themselves.
June 4, 2022
I am so grateful to have had a class for introduction to these works, it has helped me to understand the way Clifton explores black voices in religion, and other voices. Such an incredible author, I can’t recommend this enough.
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February 22, 2017Every unpublished poem in this collection is a gift. If you have only ever read blessings on the boat and the book of light, this collection of poetry allows readers to gain greater insight into the mind of Lucille Clifton as a poet. Her mini collections of poetry about chinese zen oxen, 9/11 and the days immediately following, elegies to dead family members and friends, and many more subjects are touching as well as thought provoking. Most interesting to this collection is watching the progression of Clifton's style in terms of line breaks and bucking the convention of standard English grammar. the spaces in the middle of sentences act as periods, and after awhile you become accustomed to reading her poetry and understanding the pauses and stop gaps.
It has taken me two months to finish this anthology, and it's a bittersweet feeling knowing there is no more forthcoming poetry.
It has taken me two months to finish this anthology, and it's a bittersweet feeling knowing there is no more forthcoming poetry.
October 6, 2012
The masterful, the wonderful Lucille Clifton finally gets her Collected Poems. I will happily be reading these poems for the rest of my days. Lovely edition, too!
July 19, 2020
SIX WORD REVIEW: Lucille Clifton poem in lieu of review...
some dreams hang in the air
like smoke, some dreams
get all in your clothes and
be wearing them more than you do and
you be half the time trying to
hold them and half the time
trying to wave them away.
their smell be over you and
they get to your eyes and
you cry. the fire be gone
and the wood but some dreams
hang in the air like smoke
touching everything.
some dreams hang in the air
like smoke, some dreams
get all in your clothes and
be wearing them more than you do and
you be half the time trying to
hold them and half the time
trying to wave them away.
their smell be over you and
they get to your eyes and
you cry. the fire be gone
and the wood but some dreams
hang in the air like smoke
touching everything.
May 4, 2020
Content Warnings:
A truly great poet.
A truly great poet.
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May 6, 2024My grandma is going to have so much fun with this woman in heaven
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October 20, 2024“men will come here, full armed, / to make their last war.”
June 24, 2023
I have never read such a massive collection of poetry, and certainly have not enjoyed so many poems by the same poet. Lucille Clifton’s poetry uses language as ordinary as Mary Oliver’s, and her poetry is equally profound, but has more breadth of subject and perspective. “blessing the boats” and “i am not done yet” are favorites, but there are so many that deeply touched me.
July 26, 2020
clifton distills her poetry down to the essence of human emotion. so brilliant at appropriating identities that at times her words feel truly divine. must read
June 6, 2018
Lucille Clifton is hands down one of my favorite poets, if not my favorite. She writes from a place of heart and soul. It struck me that she was someone who needed to write poetry in order to make sense of her world and her place in it. Above all, she uses poetry to assert the dignity of every human on this planet, to express her love for them. She is visionary and heart-ful and supremely intelligent. Her style is simple and brief; her poems often hold their power through one image or emotion, and she frequently repeats words and phrases like a chorus would. None of her poems are overly complicated or overworked, yet her message is always sophisticated and complex. The subject matter of her poetry is varied: she covers her battle with cancer, what it means to be a Black woman, what it means to have African ancestry, Biblical characters, memorials to famous and not famous people who have died, mothering and daughtering, slavery, survival, Native American history and oppression, racism, Hindu deities, apartheid in South Africa, the Civil Rights Movement in the US, genocide, and what it means to be a human as a member of the human race. She deeply understands that we are all connected and that our actions have the potential to affect people we’ve never even met, who live both here and now and who might live in the future. Even though the subjects she address in her poems are often dark and hard hitting, the overall tone of her entire collection of poems is that of triumph and celebration. What a gem of a poet and person she was; if you haven’t read her work, you’re missing out on the words of one of the greatest American poets who ever lived.
June 13, 2020
I wish I could remember why I wanted to read this book. I’m glad I did. It covers a dazzling lifetime of poetry. Everything from her body to her family to her battle with cancer to tales of Lucifer and King David. We learn that she loved her mother who died young and despised her father who sexually abused her and lived to 92. She refers to him bitterly as a lucky man. Her yearning for her mother manifests itself throughout her life of poetry. Her poems cover history and some are meditations on civil rights personalities including Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton and Medgar Evers’ The poem about Medgar Evers covers the last trail of his murderer who was finally brought to justice at the age of 80. Ever’s son come to the trial nearly the age of his father when he was murdered. The murderer turns away from his wife. He’s just a sick old man. Medgar Evers though is always the handsome, vital husband and father that the world remembers. The poem that brought tears to my eyes is Memory. It’s about the time her mother took her to get her “first grownup shoes.” Lucille remembers it as a humiliating experience describing her mother wilting under the white salesman’s words. Her mother only remembers that she took her daughter shopping for new shoes. This is such a beautiful volume of poetry. If you like poetry that speaks to you, you’ll find some here.
July 26, 2020
My sister, a poet, insisted I buy and read this book. I’m so glad I listened. I whined a bit about the weight, but I learned, or relearned, to enjoy reading sitting up instead of horizontal in bed.
In all the poems, there was not one I did not like, and many I liked very much. Several times, something she said, the somehow of her saying it, flipped a switch in my mind, and I put the book down, and wrote poems because of her work. Not copies, not even similar, not even on the same topic, but her words, her beauty, spurred me to write.
I am so sorry I will not have the opportunity to meet her, to take a class from her, to tell her ‘Thank You’ for so much beauty, so much song, so much life, in person. When I grow up, I want to be Lucille Clifton. I am so grateful I have this wonderful book. Kevin Young did a marvelous job putting it together.
When I grow up, I want to be Lucille Clifton
In all the poems, there was not one I did not like, and many I liked very much. Several times, something she said, the somehow of her saying it, flipped a switch in my mind, and I put the book down, and wrote poems because of her work. Not copies, not even similar, not even on the same topic, but her words, her beauty, spurred me to write.
I am so sorry I will not have the opportunity to meet her, to take a class from her, to tell her ‘Thank You’ for so much beauty, so much song, so much life, in person. When I grow up, I want to be Lucille Clifton. I am so grateful I have this wonderful book. Kevin Young did a marvelous job putting it together.
When I grow up, I want to be Lucille Clifton
November 25, 2012
An excellent curation of Clifton's work presented faithful to her original formatting and design. Morrison and Young both have wonderful words to frame this collection, but the best that can be said is they get out of the way quick and let the poetry take its central place. Many poets do not stand up to a collected. Their subject grows wearisome or their style proves repetitive. Many poets presented in a collected prove, in the end, derivative of their earlier selves. Ms. Clifton, her life's work presented here from end to end, speaks to us a magic language that never tires or exhausts or explains itself. It never chides or preaches even when it should, when it would from another poet.
This is a well constructed cloth edition with a ribbon to mark your place or a favorite poem. It is a joy of a book to hold, to read. BOA should be proud of this publication.
December 5, 2015
Lucille Clifton was a Jeopardy champion.
I learned that reading information about her at the end. I was pleasantly surprised, but it also made sense. Her poems are full of references to literature, mythology, the Bible, and history; she would know information in a lot of categories.
In that way she reminded me of Countee Cullen, whose poetry was greatly influenced by his classical education. She is fully her own entity though, writing in modern free verse, and making very personal poems about family, health, and mortality.
I was amazed at how spare her poems were, while still being so full of feeling.
This seems obvious, but the book is very long. Pace yourself.
I learned that reading information about her at the end. I was pleasantly surprised, but it also made sense. Her poems are full of references to literature, mythology, the Bible, and history; she would know information in a lot of categories.
In that way she reminded me of Countee Cullen, whose poetry was greatly influenced by his classical education. She is fully her own entity though, writing in modern free verse, and making very personal poems about family, health, and mortality.
I was amazed at how spare her poems were, while still being so full of feeling.
This seems obvious, but the book is very long. Pace yourself.
August 27, 2013
A delightful tour of one of our best poets. Clifton writes with a very spare line, at points moving toward the meditative. Her themes range from her youth when she was engaged by the civil rights struggle (and generally with echoes of the Black Art Movement), to her life as a woman and mother, to considerations on the life she lived. Reading through the collection one discovers the poet discovering herself and facing the various trials of her life. Many poems are profoundly heart-felt.
February 12, 2013
I wasn't sure that I was going to read all of this 700 plus page book, but once I got started it was hard to quit. These poems are simple but elegant. They address issues common and rare. They have a well-developed sense of justice and I found them particulary inspiring and stimulating in a creative sense.
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June 10, 2013The ability to make the terse line seem large and triumphant -- clarion call with the Dizzy Gillespe tight sonic punch and pure pow.
Just read her and hear her on her own terms ... she made the terms ... a hard thing to do for any writer.
Just read her and hear her on her own terms ... she made the terms ... a hard thing to do for any writer.
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