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Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980
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.
276 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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2697 people want to read
About the author
Lucille Clifton
82 books435 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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Displaying 1 - 30 of 82 reviews
November 18, 2013
Unbelievable. Clifton had just laid out the guide to being alive, female, and Black in the US through her poetry and memoir. Poetry has never moved me as much as this, and I've never read so much from and about a person in such a short amount of time. All the work of navigating the world, ourselves, our families, and loved ones is right there, delivered in easily digestible but sad, celebratory, and unashamed images, moments, observations. Much more I can say but this is clearly more of a response than a review.
October 18, 2025
This a collection of most of Lucille Clifton's poems and her memoir Generations. Especially the latter I would highly recommend. Lucille's family history reminded me so much of what Toni Morrison was trying to convey through her stories. And I appreciate oral history and how the word was passed like the next gal but I'm more than glad that we have this older generation of Black women (Lucille passed away in 2010, Toni in 2019 ... both were born in the 30s) who wrote theirs down. This entire book is a treasure trove, and though I don't necessarily vibe with Lucille's poetic style, I can't deny that she told it how it is.
April 5, 2022
Came for the poetry because of “i am running into a new year” and fell in love with the memoir.
March 20, 2025
Tears in my eyes. Real beautiful heavy tears in my eyes. This book is so special. The poetry is incredible ofc (I said 7 months ago that Lucille Clifton has never let me down) but the memoir shattered me. Completely shattered what I thot a memoir could be and where the stress points could be. This book is the epitome of a very large and loose collection of feelings and orientations called Black Feminist theory and I can count only one or two other books that live up to that call/tradition as powerfully as Lucille Clifton did in this collection.
“My daddy wrote me a letter my first week there, and my Daddy could only write his name. But he got this letter together and it said ‘dear Lucilleman, I miss you so much but you are there getting what we want you to have be a good girl signed your daddy.’ I cried and cried because it was the greatest letter I ever read or read about in my whole life. Mama wrote me too and her letter said ‘your daddy has written you a letter and he worked all day’ p269
So much more I could gush out but I’ll stop. This is a really special collection of writing, memory work, and a really really really thoughtful and material heavy reckoning with the absurdity of the transatlantic slave trade. Lucille Clifton makes me want to be a better person.
“My daddy wrote me a letter my first week there, and my Daddy could only write his name. But he got this letter together and it said ‘dear Lucilleman, I miss you so much but you are there getting what we want you to have be a good girl signed your daddy.’ I cried and cried because it was the greatest letter I ever read or read about in my whole life. Mama wrote me too and her letter said ‘your daddy has written you a letter and he worked all day’ p269
So much more I could gush out but I’ll stop. This is a really special collection of writing, memory work, and a really really really thoughtful and material heavy reckoning with the absurdity of the transatlantic slave trade. Lucille Clifton makes me want to be a better person.
Read
December 26, 2008I love this book. I return to it again and again, reread parts of it. Clifton was in Portland recently, and I was able to hear her read, and she did so with great charm and humanness. Her language is so simple, and yet through repetition and arrangement on the page he work is so beautiful, pulling me in again and again. I like the simplicity, the way she captures a feeling in just a word or two.
January 8, 2023
i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twentysix and thirtysix
even thirtysix but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twentysix and thirtysix
even thirtysix but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me
October 30, 2022
Extraordinary
August 10, 2013
There is no finer sensibility in American poetry than this rich, illuminating, caring poet's work.
October 9, 2024
I don’t know how Clifton has been a blindspot in my poetry. The way she can weave such depth into such a short poem is remarkable. She can deliver an ode to a person in no less than 8 lines and 20 words and it perfectly encapsulates that persons life.
Clifton talks about people, nature, the state of blackness easily but she is most known for her poems about herself that somehow can fill all those formerly mentioned. You can look at “homage to my hips” which she may be famous for, but I’d say “the thirty eighth year” is her most memorable work. In it you find the self-deprecation that so many artists are scared to confront, this almost ghost of her mother that haunts but also inspires her, and this gloried resignation of herself as ordinary. Aspects we can relate to as humans, knowing we are all remarkable but still nonetheless humans that’s struggle to find ourselves.
The memoir reminds me a lot of the mythogeaphical nature of Audre Lorde’s “Zami.” They both have this legend telling style but Clifton mixes long-form lyrical poetry into it.
Clifton talks about people, nature, the state of blackness easily but she is most known for her poems about herself that somehow can fill all those formerly mentioned. You can look at “homage to my hips” which she may be famous for, but I’d say “the thirty eighth year” is her most memorable work. In it you find the self-deprecation that so many artists are scared to confront, this almost ghost of her mother that haunts but also inspires her, and this gloried resignation of herself as ordinary. Aspects we can relate to as humans, knowing we are all remarkable but still nonetheless humans that’s struggle to find ourselves.
The memoir reminds me a lot of the mythogeaphical nature of Audre Lorde’s “Zami.” They both have this legend telling style but Clifton mixes long-form lyrical poetry into it.
July 22, 2023
Here’s to Erika Knox for the stellar recommendation🫶🏼 pro tip to start your days out reading poetry. I loved the way way Lucille wrote and the gambit of topics she covered from family lineage to religion to race to friends- MAGIC
POTB:
friends come
explaining to me that my mind
is the obvious assassin
the terrorist of voices
who has waited
to tell me miraculous lies
all my life. no
i say
friends
the ones who talk to me
their words thin as wire
their chorus fine as crystal
their truth direct as stone,
they are present as air.
they are there.
POTB:
friends come
explaining to me that my mind
is the obvious assassin
the terrorist of voices
who has waited
to tell me miraculous lies
all my life. no
i say
friends
the ones who talk to me
their words thin as wire
their chorus fine as crystal
their truth direct as stone,
they are present as air.
they are there.
October 11, 2025
First poetry book I read that flows seamlessly through generations of a family, many era’s of america, and the decades of a woman’s life. Lucille loves her family and I love her and this book very much.
November 17, 2022
Seriously beautiful
February 6, 2024
"i agree with the leaves"... wowwwwwww
February 24, 2025
“lighten up
why is your hand
so heavy
on just poor
me?”
why is your hand
so heavy
on just poor
me?”
June 28, 2023
This collection contains the complete texts of Good Times, Good News About the Earth, An Ordinary Woman, and Two-Headed Woman, as well as Generations, a prose memoir about her family, "the generations of Caroline Donald, born free among the Dahomey people in 1822 and died free in Bedford Virginia in 1910," all the way down to Clifton herself.
Some of these poems unfold from the first words until the last, blooming open as I read, and some are locked up tight and I couldn't find a way in. Sometimes it's because they're so specific to Clifton, peppered with names and places I don't know, shortcuts to her own memories. Sometimes it's the abundance of Christian imagery, which I only barely understand and have no interest in, unfortunately for me, because several of the volumes here are very interested in it.
In comparison, the prose poem "Generations," which reads like a personal essay with a little too much poetical repetition to pass for one, is like a cheat sheet for the rest of these poems. It's open and compelling and complicated and full of laughter and tears. It's about the death of her father and it's a reflection on where she came from as she shares her memories of her parents and her parent's memories of their parents, right back on into the high grass, and I think I learned more about her there than in all the poems previous. It definitely would have informed the others if I'd read it first, but the book is in chronological order.
Is this where I say I really do enjoy Clifton's work? Because I do. It might be her later stuff just works better for me.
Some of my favorites from this collection: my mama moved among the days; the discoveries of fire; if something should happen; malcolm; in salem; sisters; new bones; this morning; the coming of Kali; she understands me; the thirty eighth year; what the mirror said; there is a girl inside; poem on my fortieth birthday to my mother who died young; anna speaks of the childhood of mary her daughter.
Contains (in part): n-word; anti-Polish slurs; references to chattel slavery; death of parents, grief; references to domestic violence and possible child abuse.
Some of these poems unfold from the first words until the last, blooming open as I read, and some are locked up tight and I couldn't find a way in. Sometimes it's because they're so specific to Clifton, peppered with names and places I don't know, shortcuts to her own memories. Sometimes it's the abundance of Christian imagery, which I only barely understand and have no interest in, unfortunately for me, because several of the volumes here are very interested in it.
In comparison, the prose poem "Generations," which reads like a personal essay with a little too much poetical repetition to pass for one, is like a cheat sheet for the rest of these poems. It's open and compelling and complicated and full of laughter and tears. It's about the death of her father and it's a reflection on where she came from as she shares her memories of her parents and her parent's memories of their parents, right back on into the high grass, and I think I learned more about her there than in all the poems previous. It definitely would have informed the others if I'd read it first, but the book is in chronological order.
Is this where I say I really do enjoy Clifton's work? Because I do. It might be her later stuff just works better for me.
Some of my favorites from this collection: my mama moved among the days; the discoveries of fire; if something should happen; malcolm; in salem; sisters; new bones; this morning; the coming of Kali; she understands me; the thirty eighth year; what the mirror said; there is a girl inside; poem on my fortieth birthday to my mother who died young; anna speaks of the childhood of mary her daughter.
Contains (in part): n-word; anti-Polish slurs; references to chattel slavery; death of parents, grief; references to domestic violence and possible child abuse.
May 11, 2021
If you haven’t read anything of Clifton’s before, I highly suggest this collection of some of her popular work. You get 4 of her published books in one neatly bound package, and it feels like highway robbery. There’s power in just holding this (4 times over) masterpiece in your hands.
Peak “Beyoncé ‘Grown Woman’ before Beyoncé even knew Beyoncé was gonna be Beyoncé. So, if you need some of that energy in your life, grab this one now.
Peak “Beyoncé ‘Grown Woman’ before Beyoncé even knew Beyoncé was gonna be Beyoncé. So, if you need some of that energy in your life, grab this one now.
June 13, 2020
the light that came to lucille clifton
came in a shift of knowing
when even her fondest sureties
faded away. it was the summer
she understood that she had not understood
and was not mistress even
of her own off eye. then
the man escaped throwing away his tie and
the children grew legs and started walking and
she could see the peril of an
unexamined life.
she closed her eyes, afraid to look for her
authenticity
but the light insists on itself in the world;
a voice from the nondead past started talking,
she closed her ears and it spelled out in her hand
"you might as well answer the door, my child,
the truth is furiously knocking."
--Lucille Clifton
I really lucked out when I found this book in the little free library that stands on a street corner in my neighborhood. I love when happy accidents shape my life--in this case, my self-led poetry education. Better late than never.
came in a shift of knowing
when even her fondest sureties
faded away. it was the summer
she understood that she had not understood
and was not mistress even
of her own off eye. then
the man escaped throwing away his tie and
the children grew legs and started walking and
she could see the peril of an
unexamined life.
she closed her eyes, afraid to look for her
authenticity
but the light insists on itself in the world;
a voice from the nondead past started talking,
she closed her ears and it spelled out in her hand
"you might as well answer the door, my child,
the truth is furiously knocking."
--Lucille Clifton
I really lucked out when I found this book in the little free library that stands on a street corner in my neighborhood. I love when happy accidents shape my life--in this case, my self-led poetry education. Better late than never.
October 3, 2016
Powerful poetry and memoir by contemporary black poet, with gems like these:
"Oh, slavery, slavery," my Daddy would say. "It ain't something in a book, Lue. Even the good parts was awful." (page 237), and this poem I can't get out of my head about Mary's mother:
anna speaks of the childhood of mary her daughter
we rise up early and
we work. work is the medicine
for dreams.
that dream
i am having again;
she washed in light,
whole world bowed to its knees,
she on a hill looking up,
face all long tears.
and shall i give her up
to dreaming them? i fight this thing.
all day we scrubbing scrubbing.
Thank you, Lucille, for inspiring me today.
"Oh, slavery, slavery," my Daddy would say. "It ain't something in a book, Lue. Even the good parts was awful." (page 237), and this poem I can't get out of my head about Mary's mother:
anna speaks of the childhood of mary her daughter
we rise up early and
we work. work is the medicine
for dreams.
that dream
i am having again;
she washed in light,
whole world bowed to its knees,
she on a hill looking up,
face all long tears.
and shall i give her up
to dreaming them? i fight this thing.
all day we scrubbing scrubbing.
Thank you, Lucille, for inspiring me today.
September 16, 2013
كل شىء كان مضحكاً
القسم الخاص بالذكريات فائق الروعة، أما الشعر فلا..اعجبتنى بضع قصائد.
آخر مرة رأيتها كانت واقفة فى شرفة أبى وذراعها حول عشيقها بوبى وكان يلوّح. بوبى، عشيقها، بعين واحدة. كان لها ذات يوم عشيق بعين واحدة أيضا، ولقد سمعت بابا يقول لنفسه: كل عشاقها بعين واحدة. ألا تستطيع أن تحصل على واحد بعينين؟
القسم الخاص بالذكريات فائق الروعة، أما الشعر فلا..اعجبتنى بضع قصائد.
آخر مرة رأيتها كانت واقفة فى شرفة أبى وذراعها حول عشيقها بوبى وكان يلوّح. بوبى، عشيقها، بعين واحدة. كان لها ذات يوم عشيق بعين واحدة أيضا، ولقد سمعت بابا يقول لنفسه: كل عشاقها بعين واحدة. ألا تستطيع أن تحصل على واحد بعينين؟
November 8, 2017
When I️ picked up this book, I didn’t realize it was actually a compilation of 4 books of her poetry and a memoir! It’s a lot! A lot to read in a linear way, a lot to take in, digest, reflect on but it’s every bit phenomenal and beautiful and tragic.
I’ll be referring to this often... I’ve marked many pages.
The memoir is my favorite!
I’ll be referring to this often... I’ve marked many pages.
The memoir is my favorite!
May 30, 2010
I fell in love with Clifton through this book. This book made me stumble all over my words when I met her. So succinct, so powerful, so honest- both her words and the woman herself.
June 21, 2014
I love everything about Lucille Clifton and her style of writing. If you've never read her works before this is the best place to start.
April 24, 2017
Lucille Clifton makes my soul sing.
October 9, 2017
Had so may reasons to think of Lucille Clifton and her early work lately. I've been in Buffalo, where she grew up (well, Depew), worked at SUNY Fredonia where she finished college. There one of the faculty had "homage to my hips" tacked onto a bulletin board. Drive past the empty steel mill where her father worked and which populates her marvelously compact memoir. & I've been trying to figure out what poetry is and should do--and she (w/Jeff Coleman) was an early inspiration at St. Mary's. So I picked up Cheryl's copy of Good Woman. This was overdue. Clifton sometimes gets characterized as celebrating relationships, blackness, and womanhood in an "elemental" way (see the 2010 New Yorker piece). I was struck by how unelemental some of her early poems and memoirs were in their situation in specific places and historical events--the scissor man crossing the line between white and black neighborhoods in "the 1st," specific intersections in "tyrone (1) ("the buffalo soldiers / have taken up position / corner of jefferson and sycamore ), a strike by Polish steelworkers in Buffalo, poems to Malcom X, Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Seale. If she writes about relationships, blackness, and womanhood some of her poems are about what this meant in very specific times, places, and personal and political struggles. Anyway, just a small observation in this happy rereading. I walked away thinking of Clifton's work as far more multifaceted and as involving more transformations between books than I'd originally thought. Some poems I'd like to come back to, perhaps teach: "good times" (24-25), "flowers" (47-50), "adam and eve" (91), "in salem" (111), "she insists on me" (136), "august the 12th" (172).
June 10, 2020
I saw Lucille Clifton’s Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980 on a list, marked it To-Read on Goodreads, and then got a text from Teresa, who is also on Goodreads, saying she had it and did I want to read it? I love it when that happens.
Lucille Clifton was a poet from Buffalo, New York. She passed away in 2010. She has been a finalist twice for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.
I always try to enjoy poetry because the idea of slowing down and noticing and capturing moments using precise language is very appealing. But the thing is, I just don’t always understand poems. Clifton’s poems are short. The ones I understood were about mothers, motherhood, aging and aging bodies, friendship between women, and racism.
The last 50 pages of the book were in paragraph form but still had a poetic slant. These words captured some of Ms. Clifton’s familial history, including the repeated refrain from the women in her life, "Be proud, you're from Dahomey women!" calling back her Benin ancestors.
Lucille Clifton was a poet from Buffalo, New York. She passed away in 2010. She has been a finalist twice for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.
I always try to enjoy poetry because the idea of slowing down and noticing and capturing moments using precise language is very appealing. But the thing is, I just don’t always understand poems. Clifton’s poems are short. The ones I understood were about mothers, motherhood, aging and aging bodies, friendship between women, and racism.
The last 50 pages of the book were in paragraph form but still had a poetic slant. These words captured some of Ms. Clifton’s familial history, including the repeated refrain from the women in her life, "Be proud, you're from Dahomey women!" calling back her Benin ancestors.
December 3, 2021
Beautiful, soul-felt collection. Clifton's self-acceptance, perfections and imperfections included, expressed in heedless opposition to what anyone thinks or believes, is what moved me most. There's grief, too, and regrets, but she doesn't let any of that define her, or not exclusively, anyway. I really should talk about the speaker of the poems, though, not Clifton herself. It's just that the "memoir" section of the book was seamless with the poetry, and it really seemed like it was Lucille Clifton speaking throughout. I felt that her knowledge, appreciation, and acceptance of her ancestors--her people--were, at least in part, the source of her own self-acceptance. She knew who she was and she knew whom she came from. This body of work was imbued with generosity. I was humbled and inspired.
September 5, 2020
I'm not used to reading poetry, and this book was introduced to me as a mix of poetry and prose, so I wasn't sure quite what to expect. In the end, there was more poetry than I'd hoped, but the poetry was also better than I'd imagined it might be. Which makes sense, really, because it was one of Clifton's poems in the Paris Review that started me off looking for more of her writing to read.
In prose and poetry alike, Clifton distils moods and goings-on perfectly. "The slow dance between the streets and the cells", "the young Black boy's initiation into wine and worse", "I have a woman's certainties; bodies pulled from me, pushed into me" - just three examples of the complex and harrowing made aesthetically palatable by words and cadence that roll off the tongue.
My attention wavered on some of the poetry, but because of my unfamiliarity with the medium rather than Clifton being anything other than articulate, open, and fundamentally honest with her words.
In prose and poetry alike, Clifton distils moods and goings-on perfectly. "The slow dance between the streets and the cells", "the young Black boy's initiation into wine and worse", "I have a woman's certainties; bodies pulled from me, pushed into me" - just three examples of the complex and harrowing made aesthetically palatable by words and cadence that roll off the tongue.
My attention wavered on some of the poetry, but because of my unfamiliarity with the medium rather than Clifton being anything other than articulate, open, and fundamentally honest with her words.
December 27, 2021
She fills words with so much space in between. Worlds and worlds of Clifton
“Sometimes
The whole world of women
Seems a landscape of
Red blood and things
That need healing,
The fears all
Fears of the flesh;
Will it open
Or close
Will it scar or
Keep bleeding
Will it live
Will it live
Will it live and
Will he murder it or
Marry it.”
“Mother i have managed to unlearn
My lessons. I am left
In otherness. Mother
Someone calling itself Light
Has opened my inside.
I am flooded with brilliance
Mother,
Someone of it is answering to
Your name.”
“Sometimes
The whole world of women
Seems a landscape of
Red blood and things
That need healing,
The fears all
Fears of the flesh;
Will it open
Or close
Will it scar or
Keep bleeding
Will it live
Will it live
Will it live and
Will he murder it or
Marry it.”
“Mother i have managed to unlearn
My lessons. I am left
In otherness. Mother
Someone calling itself Light
Has opened my inside.
I am flooded with brilliance
Mother,
Someone of it is answering to
Your name.”
January 31, 2025
This is such a heartfelt work. Lucille’s poetry is amazing, and I fell in love with her memoir, specially her writing. It’s beautiful, profound, simple, raw, and really inspiring. I really appreciate how she could navigate through painful topics with such a graceful and beautiful way to express her self, her experiences and family stories. Definitely one of my favorites readings so far, thankfully I could have lots of inspirations and ideas while reading her beautiful work.
July 11, 2020
i had added this to my list of "want to read" last month.. then a couple of days ago i found it already on my book shelf, i guess i read it a few years ago (it has my notes & underlinings in it already) but completely forgot. but it was a delightful reread. lucille will always be one of my favorite poets/writers.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 82 reviews