Lucille Clifton Books

Lucille Clifton is my aunt, my father's sister. However, my father was absent, so to me, this book is more than a collection of poems or casual redaing but a true gift of my own family history in black and white, a history that I wasn't aware of. Now that I it has given me strength. My friends and I summon up my aunt's namesake, the ORIGINAL Lucille (!)anytime we need to lay down the law! Thank you Aunt Lucille for your gift and for this gift to me.

Lucille Clifton's GOOD WOMAN is an excellent volume of poetry. Moreover, the memoir challenges the traditional exercise of writing the self and experience that merits articulation. Clifton's poems and imagery rarely disappoint, but name the unspoken and bring greater consciousness and empowerment.

Lucille Clifton has always been one of my favorite poets. Her accessible poetry captures in moving, eloquent verse living in the world. Her unique voice speaks in language that is not unnecessarily dense and "cerebral": an especially desirable trait given the frequently written complaint regarding lack of readership for modern poetry. Lucille Clifton writes poetry we ALL can relate to, not just the academics and, to be a little unkind, poetry "snobs". Recommended highly.

I love reading Lucille Clifton's poetry. I get a real sense of her person, her pain, her history. Some poems are so moving, I can't help but cry. I am stunned to find such fine wording, the way she knows just what word to use. Some of her word choices are unusual....they're not a way that one would have thought of that word, but in the context of the poem, the word finds a home, makes sense. Additionally, she expresses her appreciation of the earth in almost religious terms; her exploration of religion in her poetry is extremely appealing to me. She seems to have a sense of appreciation for, and sympathetic understanding of, the characters (Job, Moses especially) in the Bible, I feel closer to them myself when viewing them through her eyes. I like this book also because you feel the strength of the woman behind the words, she's wise, she's had her pain, but she's able to celebrate those things in life that are worth celebrating -- love, family, simple pleasures and even her own hair and hips. I love too many poems to list here, but you should go to your library and read these poems; even if you don't buy the book, these poems should find a place in your life: Salt, The Lesson of the Falling Leaves, Mary, Cutting Greens....so many more. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

I was fortunate enough to hear Ms. Clifton read from this and other works at a small reading in Southern Maryland a few summers back...her rich, resonant voice was the pefect accompaniment to her heartfelt-yet-spare language. In the "Clark Kent" series of poems in this collection, she slays the reader in a single line that cuts through the pretty prose one might find in another poet's work, arriving at the heart of disappointed love ("the question for you is/what have you ever traveled toward/more than your own safety?). In another favorite, "still there is mercy, there is grace," she celebrates the quiet, filling grace of god (how otherwise/could i, a sleek old/traveler/curl one day safe and still/ beside You/at Your feet, perhaps/but, amen, Yours) From love to God---and maybe the two, of course, aren't at such a distance---to everything in between, Ms. Clifton captures what it is to be, to feel, to connect with others...and while some of her poetry also beautifully and mystically celebrates and mourns the experiences of African Americans, her voice is too universal, in my opinion, to categorize; there wasn't a word in this collection that failed to cross over color and burrow itself right into the heart of the whole color spectrum of human experience. If you can hear her read, don't miss it, but if you can't, her voice will sing through from the pages with clarity and grace.

It's hard to believe what Lucille Clifton can do with a handful of lines of poetry. She is our modern-day Emily Dickinson and despite all the praise that she's received over her career, it's not nearly enough. In her best work -- which is most of her work -- it's as if her intelligence cracks open a hole in the sky, a revelation that approaches religious experience. Book of Light is to my mind her very best book. It includes poem cycles based on both classical pagan mythology and judeo-christian scriptures, most notably a fabulous monologue in which Satan addresses God -- the best and most interesting use of Satan in English poetry since John Milton.

Lucille Clifton's Book of Light manages to convey some of the joy of the author. The poems are simple but their message is not. A wonderful book to serve as an introduction to one of American's premiere poets.

I read this book the first year I was in the pastorate, some 14 years ago or so. It has been the perfect book to help my younger staff people understand the process of grief. This book has never failed to bring up the emotions of loss which every staff member has suffered. The five stages of grief, is a universal understanding which has helped every adult I have worked with, to understand how they are "normal" in their feelings.

Further, every staff person I have worked with, has bought this book. We use it more for adults, than for children. (Though it is very good for children.) The reason why, is because the verse is very sharp and connects with the soul of people. The adult empathizes with the little boy. This, in turn, connects the adult with the universal nature of grief.

I could spend hours upon hours of counseling grief without this book. With this book, most of my parishoners who have suffered loss, work through the stages with heads up and eyes open... tears and all. All have moved through the stages without fixating very long in any of them.

Lucille Clifton, is simply a genius. Ann Grifalconi (illustrator) brings the genius to Clifton's wise and calming verse with her warm charcoal illustrations. Thank you, ladies.

This is absolutely the best book out there for a young child who has lost a parent. Written by Lucille Cliffton in simple rhyme, it goes through the 5 stages of grief. As the last stage of grief is acceptance, it ends with "and no matter what happens when people die, love doesn't stop and neither will I." The illustrations of this young African American boy and his mother are charcoal line drawings ~~ beautifully illustrating the profound loss this child has suffered, affirming the loss and yet reassuring the reader that acceptance and peace will come.

This is a simply written book about a little boy who goes through the five stages of grief after the death of his father. The illustrations are absolutely beautiful and the book still brings tears to my eyes everytime I read it. Lucille Clifton is an excellent author who uses simplicity with great beauty. This book is good for young children 3-5 who are trying to understand and deal with grief. I would definitely recommend this with no hesitation!

if the name 'lucille' means 'light bearer'' this book filfulls that promise. poets read her work to learn how to compress wit and gravity into a very few lines. i read read this about a decade ago and just looking at the table of contents on Poem Finder bought back a few of the lines -- i forgive my body/ i forgive my blood

In this thoughtful collection of poetry, Lucille Clifton embraces mortality as quickly as she rejects it. She swallows life's ugliness and spits out something clean like water. Her trademark minimalism is present throughout and as masterful as always.

"Cruelty" made me read it 10x straight... not for understanding, but for the pleasure in the hard beauty and soft power of her words.

You deserve this book.

While this collection might appear gimmicky to some, a quick persusal of the table of contents will show that many respected poets have used fairy tale motifs in their work. Beaumont and Carlson have gathered numerous poems from a wide range of poets that reflect the enduring themes and characters we inherited through the work of the Brothers Grimm. The usual suspects, such as Anne Sexton, are here but so are some lesser known poets. The anthology is strong and represents many well-known fairy tales along with a few that are lesser known by the general public. The book is recommended for libraries and classrooms in which poetry and/or fairy tales are taught. It also makes great armchair reading for anyone interested in new interpretations of familiar stories.

THE POETS GRIMM is an essential addition to the collection of anyone who grew up with fairy tales - that is, everyone in America who ever opened a storybook that began "Once upon a time. . ." or watched a Disney movie that opened with a princess tortured by her evil stepmother. Here are the stories from the Grimm brothers collections that terrified and delighted us as children, now revisited with adult distance, wisdom, and humor. Ably edited by Jeanne Marie Beaumont and Claudia Carlson, THE POETS GRIMM embraces the breadth of poetry in English in the 20th century, from our most recent poet laureate, Louise Glück, to writers like Terri Windling and Jane Yolen, best known for their work in contemporary fantasy and science fiction. Anne Sexton's important poem, "Twelve Dancing Princesses," from her groundbreaking collection TRANSFORMATIONS, is included, as is an intensely moving poem by Amy Lowell from 1912, which strikes a surprisingly contemporary note.

A deep sympathy for the much maligned usual suspects, wolves and witches, underlies the entire volume, and frankly, if I were Prince Charming, I'd have a call in to my lawyer about a possible libel suit. Perhaps most American of all the Grimm interpretations found here is Tim Siebles' "What Bugs Bunny said to Red Riding Hood," which alone is worth the price of the entire collection.

Reading the poems in this collection bathes the old tales in a new and revelatory light; most telling of all perhaps are the poems which offer new versions of the detailed and mysterious marching orders given to every fairy tale hero or heroine who set off, willingly or not, on a quest. Neil Gaiman's "Instructions," in this vein, makes wonderful new sense of these ever-puzzling rules. Through these poems we see our own childhoods recast, and the clamor of impossibly conflicting childhood directives we all received invoked and examined.

The Poets Grimm offers a wonderful snapshot of poetry of the last half of the last century, taken through an enchanted lens, and I highly recommend it to anyone who ever felt a little cheated by the words, "And they lived happily ever after."

I absolutely adore this book. I read it to my oldest daughter over 15 years ago and to my youngest daughter recently. It is a great night time read or simply a delightful story to transport one back to safe times of rememberance. The joy of having a Lucky Stone is one thing but Being a Lucky Stone is even cooler. Pick the book, find a stone and claim Yourself Lucky

Oh goodness! This is my all time favorite Book. My aunt used to read it to me when I was a little girl. I loved it! Now I have a daughter, and I am so glad I found it again!

Hilary Holladay's Wild Blessings is a well-written, well-researched critical study. It offers insight into the professional, as well as private, world of famed poet Lucille Clifton. Clifton is an incredibly talented writer, as well as a prolific speaker and activist. Holladay makes good use of these talents and brings them to the forefront in this illuminating book about the artist. Personally, after reading Wild Blessings, I had a better, much deeper, appreciation for Clifton and her work. Wild Blessings is a must read for literary scholars and students alike.

Lucille Clifton has been writing poetry since the 60s. Her poems have ranged from the monumental to the everyday, but her progression as a poet has been unfettered. She is a national treasure. There are some very interesting poems in this volume.

"September Song" is bound to draw interest, 7 poems marking the days from the September 11th terrorist attack. Clifton's treatment is unflappable. She dares us to question everything about the experience, from our fears to our subsequent reactions. She is more than unabashedly political in her views, she is also honest.

Other poems like "on dying" do recall Dickinson. The poem gives you a sense of resolution, not of loss. It's a beautiful treatment that ties in well with other poems about the mortality of being diagnosed with cancer and the surreal experience of being outside your own body.

And Clifton has never shied from treatments of race either. But she goes deeper than just race and looks at the concepts of division.

"the river between us" is used to juxtapose the confident self reliant man who fishes the river and the god-fearing man who goes to the river seeking salvation and calling for help from above. It's a powerful statement and a testament to her range and skill.

If minimalism is your benchmark for exceptional poetry, few have a better mastery than Lucille Clifton.

At times this seems like several books of poetry back to back. There are some sequences that require you to change gears very quickly.

Still this is a wonderful book of poetry, which is highly recommended.

Enjoy.

Once again, Lucille Cliftton testifies magnificently to the fullness of a life lived with all it's heartaches, triumphs and lasting understanding.

In plaintive and beautifully sparse and simple language she transports the reader into her world with all its soulfulness and quiet reflection. Wonderful.

"Mercy" is an exquisite, transcendent collection of poetry. Lucille Clifton has always written sophisticated, fearless poems that reveal the omnipresent terrors and singular triumphs of human existence. These poems are as clear, direct and beautiful as ever Clifton has written; they speak again and again to the pain that tears open our lives -- and the grace of love that can save us a little, maybe even enough.

Blessing the Boats, New and Selected Poems 1988-2000, Lucille Clifton, BOA, Ltd., Rochester, NY 2000), 132 pp, offers a often dreamy whirl through nuances of life to include lustful desires of the sex, battles with breast cancer, death of a loved one, menopause, oppression and more. Her poems are feminine in perspective, but probably universally applauded. She doesn't insults. They read like surreal episodes from a dream, having fleeting scenes change in time and place in nanosecond flashes. Words. Words are bended and hammered into concepts seen alien, yet fitting. For example, how does one "hear the bright train eye...?" What the hell is the bright train eye? But in the context of " birthday 1999," not only does it fit, it's clear and above all, enlightening. The same cannot be said for all of Clifton poems. So of them includes miscues that makes them not so clear.

Boats is partitioned into four parts, New Poems (2000), From Guilty (1991), From the Book of Light (1993) and From the Terrible Stories (1996).

new poems:
In "moonchild," the author, deals with child sex abuse by a father, but rather than make the reader feel the pain, and anguish towards men, instead she attempts to share she has learned to cope with the memory to minimize, rather than maximize continued pain and suffering.

"the photograph: a lynching," in her poem on "a picture is worth a thousand words," she proves the same can be said for her poem. She describes the stark history of a lynching, and focuses on the stunned witness of the eyes of the children. She questions the whether other kids, black and white, upon seeing the photograph will be taught accurately what happened there or will the story be misinterpreted or discarded altogether.

"jasper texas 1998 for j. byrd" is as plain as it is powerful. The narrator asks, who's inhuman, the dragged or the draggers, clearly knowing the answer -- for the victim was dragged to death, involuntarily. But, so was Rodney King's beating, although some believed that he was in control throughout the ordeal. She concludes that deposits that if singing, "We Shall Overcome" is all we going to do about oppression, then we can expect more of the same.

In "alabama 9/15/63," the narrator feels so much for the 4 little black girls will go to heaven, but even that vision is obscured by the memory of a church bombing them to smithereens.

"Praise song," illustrates the warmth of unconditional love, the idea of welcoming a family member back home against their frailties, even when they appear to have lost their mind.

from quilting:
In "birth of language," we see the proverbial Adam shuddering to whisper, "Eve," which is excellent, loaded imagery, given what would be come the most dynamic relationship known to man. His shuddering was fitting.

"sleeping beauty" is funny and typical of the male-female dynamic - she comes out of a sleep and the first thing she notices is man, "and she blamed him."

book of light:
"women you are accustomed to," Clifton extols egalitarian gender values: she wants to be the women her man has been accustomed to, because misses his "dancing tongue."

"song at midnight," the poet depicts the loneliness of an unattractive woman, as she extols, love this woman who needs love because if the Black man doesn't, who else will?

"the earth is a living thing," personifies earth as a "black and living thing...in its kinky hair."

There are a series of poems that use the metaphor of "superman" and "clark kent," to reveal issues of romance where the expectation is that men have superman powers even though there's no reference to narrator personified as the fabled "Lois."

from the terrible stories:
"fox" poems are many in which the narrator personifies a fox, fearful of the terrible stories it must tell. These poems are the sex chronicles of a woman lacking and yearning for sex, not necessarily romance.

Like "leaving fox," in desperation, the narrator drops her guards totally, leaving herself open to all kinds of pain to get the sex she craves. "keep the door unlocked until something human comes in." She knows she's exposes her vulnerabilities to the worse that may come in, but she has accepted it apart of her fulfillment.

In "one year later," the narrator ponders what if she yields to her vixen desires, but pre-empts the thought with fear of what will follow -- how ill it change or impact her life, her home, her poetry?

"a dream of foxes," the narrator supposes what if women could pursue their vixen dreams without the fear of consequences.

In `amazons," the narrator returns to other issues, such as breast cancer, mastectomy, and more. She had inherited the breast cancer gene from generations of women before her. But, fortunately, there was only a scare, due to early detection.

`slaveships" she asks why did God not protect all from the inhuman hypocrites who enslaved her people in the name of God. She questions whether the sins can go on.

In "memory," narrator recalls a childhood stripped of oppression's shadow, so she will feel like she's done a good job of protecting her child's childhood.

A few poems from Boats escaped my level of sophistication. For example, "white lady," the narrator cries to cocaine to give her a ransom so she may have her kids back. - cocaine will only tell her to make her kids depend more. I thought those well taken pleas could be better be directed at the government, white supremacy, or the dealers, but not cocaine.

And, in "poem in praise of menstruation," Clifton uses metaphors that are astounding in that they sound so right even though unless you're in a dream state, they really don't make sense. For example, uses a simile of "blood red edge of the moon" - the moon isn't red at all. A better simile might have been the sun. Or, it could be something I'm not getting because I am a man. Perhaps that is her point, during that period, excuse the pun, the sun, the moon, they're all the same.

Using a prose style, Clifton's words are defined not by Webster but by the context in which she uses them. Her words often take flight from when we've known them to some far off place where she's taking us.

Lucille Clifton, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000 (BOA Editions, 2000)

There's a lot of good stuff in this volume. Especially fine are the mythological poems from Quilting (1991), some of Clifton's best work, delicate yet earthy language full of wonderful images and gentle surprises:

"when she woke up
she was terrible.
under his mouth her mouth
turned red and warm
then almost crimson as the coals
smothered and forgotten
in the grate.
she had been gone so long.
there was much to unlearn.
she opened her eyes.
he was the first thing she saw
and she blamed him.
("Sleeping Beauty")

That's serious poetry right there. It tells you all you need to know, and not a whit more. Granted, not every piece in the volume stands up to these, but then, there aren't that many volumes of poetry every written where everything is of the same quality (and in most of those, every word is utterly, ineffably horrible). When Lucille Clifton is on her game, as you can see above, she's one of the better poets going today; if you're not acquainted with her stuff, you should be. *** ½

Clifton exemplifies all that is wrong with modern poetry. This is preachy, PC prose, with some odd linefeeds thrown in, written in the currently popular style, addressing the currently popular issues.

Review
Paul L. McGehee

Clichés are literary sins, so Lord forgive me when I say Lucile Clifton's Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000, is a blessing to own and an inciteful read. Clifton's lines and questions resonate well within the mind of a human being struggling with the issues of living. Like her story of Cancer in the poem "Dialysis", which leaves me with, "...in my dream a house is burning...in my dream I call it light". On another level, as a Black man I can appreciate her questioning the relationships between men women; love, interracial dating, rape, and lynching. Yet it is as a man comes the only critic, well not so much of a critic as it is the perspective coming from another vessel (so to speak). Clifton's poems run deep with imagery and situations articulating the complexities of being a woman, a black woman, in this society. It gives me incite, after all, mothers and sisters have left an impression of black womanhood on my heart, yet me not being a black woman (no shame hear, no offense), I don't get the poems, wholly and truly. That is it; but it is not enough to say this would not be a great addition to anyone's literary alter.

I feel compelled to respond to the person who found the opening poem "racist" because the speaker says "another child has killed a child / and i catch myself relieved that they are / white."

First of all, the fact that a poem depicts a certain attitude or feeling does not mean that the poet endorses that attitude or feeling. In this case, the sentiment is honest even if it is not morally admirable. Poetry does not always depict life or human nature as we would like them to be, but rather as they are.

Second, the last line of the poem says "these too are your children this too is your child." So the poem has corrected the speaker's own withdrawal from the scene. It ends, I think, with a rejection of racism...but it could be a good poem even if it did not.