Next: New Poems

by 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

Genres: Poetry, Black Literature

85 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1987

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Klley · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of my favorite right now i gave it to all my roomies
"female"

there is an amazon in us.
she is the secret we do not
have to learn.
the strength that opens us
beyond ourselves.
birth is our birthright.
we smile our mysterious smile.

[S꩜phie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enter the poems of Lucille Clifton, where she uses few words but somehow always chooses the right one so that you can't imagine each verse with any other selection. Streetlights bloom and dust wrinkles and hair cries and hair is pain and all clay is kin and kin. Clifton writes with a language of kinship that colors every subject she depicts and every voice she assumes with universality. While you can certainly hear echoes of the Good Woman poems + memoir in Ocean Vuong and what I've read of Kiese Laymon's memoir, Heavy (ur professor is brilliant, Julia,) I would put this more somber, worldly collection in dialogue with Giovanni, Sanchez, Adichie, and Shire.

the poem at the end of the world
is the poem the little girl breathes
into her pillow the one
she cannot tell the one
there is no one to hear this poem
is a political poem is a war poem is a
universal poem but is not about
these things this poem
is about one human heart this poem
is the poem at the end of the world

[Rachel Harding · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite books. Clifton's work is spare, deceptively simple and powerfully moving.

[Emma Colón · Rating 4 out of 5]

so sparse + simple, but you feel the weight of it in your blood. soooooo good.

[Bearen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The power of Lucille Clifton's poems here lie in the line, "I need to know their names," which appears early on and sets the stage for all of her experiments to follow: the personas and odes she writes to a litany of subjects including but not limited to Crazy Horse and Winnie Mandela, the personal deconstruction of Two-Headed Woman continued with regard to her addresses to Thelma Sayles, the vast sweeps of history she performs on numerous wounds in humanity ranging from the atomic bombing of Nagasaki to the Middle Passage and what Saidiya Hartman would call its afterlife. There are, as well, Clifton's classic attempts to map the real onto the spiritual, most vividly in, for instance, the wordplay of Mandela and mandala; if Clifton's goal has always been to use the divine as a balm on mortal suffering, then one finds no shortage of its realization here as he enlists not merely Christianity but also the tales of Buddhism, along with Indigenous storytelling, to layer history with myth toward this end. Additionally, many of her poems here are longer, too, with multiple parts, even, as though to scale themselves to the growing size of her ambitions on these pages: to take on the lives and voices of others, to attest to unspeakable parts of history, to look at the same thing from different places. Still, however, her lines are as spare as always, yet not withholding in sympathy. There is so much hurt in the world—this, we know—and Clifton's task as a poet here, if not to mend it, for that would be impossible, is to at least acknowledge it, and honor it, and give it some kind of voice, and all of that, she does.

[Sanjuro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much of the collection makes use of Clifton's usual structure and brand of evocative language. Many of the themes are the same as her other work; she writes of slavery and disenfranchisement. Specifically in this collection are poems about Apartheid, Native Americans, and womanhood. There is a refreshing (but sad) section at the end regarding the death of Clifton's husband from cancer at the young age of 49 - refreshing because it covers thematic ground that departs from Clifton's overworked themes.

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am always impressed at the way even Clifton's simplest poems evade being simplistic or trite and instead are clear and profound. A favorite from this collection:

the poem at the end of the world
is the poem the little girl breathes
into her pillow    the one
she cannot tell    the one
there is no one to hear    this poem
is a political poem    is a war poem    is a
universal poem but is not about
these things    this poem
is about one human heart    this poem
is the poem at the end of the world

[andré crombie · Rating 4 out of 5]

“atlantic is a sea of bones,
my bones,
my elegant afrikans
connecting whydah and new york,
a bridge of ivory.

seabed they call it.
in its arms my early mothers sleep
some women leapt with babies in their arms.
some women wept and threw the babies in.

maternal armies pace the atlantic floor.
i call my name into the roar of surf
and something awful answers.”

[Nikita Gill · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was my introduction to Clifton's poetry and it is by far one of the most inspiring reads I've had in a while. I highly recommend this to any poetry lover, Clifton's words are awe inspiring and beautiful.

[Stephanie G. Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

My introduction to Lucille Clifton, although a phrase of hers has been in my psyche for decades.
She drops a truth that stops your world, and as you regain your balance you have just that little bit more of clarity.

[Marisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poems are short and rich. Clifton reigns double meaning, and I bet if I reread it I would unearth even more of them in all the poems, things that went missed on my first read through. So good, so moving.

[J. Fakename · Rating 4 out of 5]

It do be like that though.

[Maha · Rating 4 out of 5]

“to say that the only mercy
is memory,
to say that the only hell
is regret.”

[angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

she powerfully frames memories that could be challenged and then proceeds to give us memories from people that are always challenged

titled next, she makes us ask ourselves -- what comes next? after we've been let into the reality of another.

[Jennie]

2023 Read Harder Challenge #20: Read a book of poetry by a BIPOC or queer author

2023 Free Black Women's Library Reading Challenge #24: A collection of poetry, short stories, essays, letters or prose

[Drabekate]

Oh, I've been loving Clifton's work. Her voice is just remarkable, seemingly simple and yet she finds just the right word every time so that I know there is so much art there. Here is an example of a short poem: "Why people be mad at me sometimes" They ask me to remember/their memories/and I keep on remembering/mine.

I've been there, in fact sometimes I forget my own memories in remembering theirs.

In any case, My favorite, and I can't seem to find someone else to read at the moment.

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

[Liv · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has always seemed like the bleakest of Lucille's collections to me, but reading it as I began to grieve Rachel Held Evans's death brought all its power to light.

[deven]

Sorrow Song (Poem)!

[Leah]

this wasn't my absolute favorite, i felt like the poems were so short/simple, but it was interesting what she chose to write about. clifton takes a the pain and experiences of people around the world and connects them to her own. there's a sort of global consciousness that seems unique to her writing.

highlights
-I. at creation
-in white america
-california lessons