The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010
Page 27
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Glaser received his B.A. from Denison University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Kent State University. He lives in St. Mary’s City with his wife, the educator Kathleen W. Glaser, who works with the Center for Courage and Renewal. He is the proud father of five grown children, Brian, Joshua, Daniel, Amira, and Eva, and nine grandchildren.
About Lucille Clifton
oh children
think about the good times
—Good Times, 1969
Lucille Clifton was one of the most distinguished, decorated, and beloved poets of her time. She won the National Book Award for Poetry, and was the first Black female recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement. Ms. Clifton received many additional honors throughout her career, beginning with the Discovery Award from the New York YW/YMHA Poetry Center in 1969 for her first volume Good Times, and including a 1976 Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for the television special “Free to Be You and Me,” a Lannan Literary Award in 1994, and the Robert Frost Medal in 2010. Her honors and awards give testament to the universality of her unique and resonant voice. She was named a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library in 1996, served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1999 to 2005, and was elected a fellow in Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1987, she became the first author to have two books of poetry—Good Woman and Next—chosen as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in the same year. She was also the author of eighteen children’s books, and in 1984 received the Coretta Scott King Award from the American Library Association for her book Everett Anderson’s Good-bye.
Born June 27, 1936, in Depew, New York, Lucille Clifton lived in Buffalo, New York, from her early childhood until 1967 when she moved to Baltimore with her husband Fred and their six children: Sidney, Fredrica, Channing, Gillian, Graham, and Alexia. Her first book of poetry, Good Times, was published in 1969, shortly after her work had been introduced to Langston Hughes by her close friend Ishmael Reed. From 1969 to 1974 her poems and essays appeared in popular publications of the time, including The Negro Digest and Ms. magazine. She was appointed Maryland’s Poet Laureate in 1974 and remained in that post for eleven years. After her husband’s death in 1984, she moved to Santa Cruz, California, having been offered a professorship at University of California at Santa Cruz. Ms. Clifton taught at numerous colleges and universities, beginning at Coppin State College in Baltimore (1974–77) and including the University of California at Santa Cruz (1984–89), Memphis State University (1994–1995), Duke University, where she served for several terms as the William Blackburn Distinguished Visiting Professor (1998–99), and Dartmouth College (2007). Beginning in 1989, Ms. Clifton taught at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, where she served as Distinguished Professor of Humanities until her retirement in 2006. She was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and received seven honorary doctorate degrees.
Lucille Clifton’s integrity and moral voice about matters in our individual and communal lives served many as a beacon of courage and compassion. Her poems, forged from experience, emotion, and a fierce, truth-telling intellect, focus on the human struggle for dignity, justice, and freedom. As the citation from the National Book Awards so accurately asserts, her poems, “fueled by emotional necessity . . . [achieve] such clarity and power that her vision becomes representative, communal, and unforgettable.” Lucille, in her life and in her poetry, dwelt in the possibilities that truth redeems, that always there is hope. Her poetry engages its reader with the deeper and more complex truths of our lives, and it does so with such clarity that even the radical ambiguity within which we live seems filled with light.
Lucille’s great courage and strength shine through her poems. Even when she wrote about personally difficult subject matter, she approached the world with infinite interest and tenderness toward the mystery of all that lives. Having survived sexual molestation, the loss of her home, and the deaths of her mother, husband, and two children, she forged a poetry that served as solace, explanation, redemption, and prayer for both herself and her audience. Ms. Clifton died on February 13, 2010, on the fifty-first anniversary of her mother’s death.
And I could tell you about things we been through, some awful ones, some wonderful, but I know that the things that make us are more than that, our lives are more than the days in them, our lives are our line and we go on. . . .
—Generations, 1976
BOA EDITIONS, LTD. AMERICAN POETS CONTINUUM SERIES
No. 1
The Fuhrer Bunker: A Cycle of Poems in Progress
W. D. Snodgrass
No. 2
She
M. L. Rosenthal
No. 3
Living With Distance
Ralph J. Mills, Jr.
No. 4
Not Just Any Death
Michael Waters
No. 5
That Was Then: New and Selected Poems
Isabella Gardner
No. 6
Things That Happen Where There Aren’t Any People
William Stafford
No. 7
The Bridge of Change: Poems 1974–1980
John Logan
No. 8
Signatures
Joseph Stroud
No. 9
People Live Here: Selected Poems 1949–1983
Louis Simpson
No. 10
Yin
Carolyn Kizer
No. 11
Duhamel: Ideas of Order in Little Canada
Bill Tremblay
No. 12
Seeing It Was So
Anthony Piccione
No. 13
Hyam Plutzik: The Collected Poems
No. 14
Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969–1980
Lucille Clifton
No. 15
Next: New Poems
Lucille Clifton
No. 16
Roxa: Voices of the Culver Family
William B. Patrick
No. 17
John Logan: The Collected Poems
No. 18
Isabella Gardner: The Collected Poems
No. 19
The Sunken Lightship
Peter Makuck
No. 20
The City in Which I Love You
Li-Young Lee
No. 21
Quilting: Poems 1987–1990
Lucille Clifton
No. 22
John Logan: The Collected Fiction
No. 23
Shenandoah and Other Verse Plays
Delmore Schwartz
No. 24
Nobody Lives on Arthur Godfrey Boulevard
Gerald Costanzo
No. 25
The Book of Names: New and Selected Poems
Barton Sutter
No. 26
Each in His Season
W. D. Snodgrass
No. 27
Wordworks: Poems Selected and New
Richard Kostelanetz
No. 28
What We Carry
Dorianne Laux
No. 29
Red Suitcase
Naomi Shihab Nye
No. 30
Song
Brigit Pegeen Kelly
No. 31
The Fuehrer Bunker: The Complete Cycle
W. D. Snodgrass
No. 32
For the Kingdom
Anthony Piccione
No. 33
The Quicken Tree
Bill Knott
No. 34
These Upraised Hands
William B. Patrick
No. 35
Crazy Horse in Stillness
William Heyen
No. 36
Quick, Now, Always
Mark Irwin
No. 37
I Have Tasted the Apple
Mary Crow
No. 38
The Terrible Stories
Lucille Clifton
No. 39
The Heat of Arrivals
Ray Gonzalez
No. 40
Jimmy & Rita
Kim Addonizio
No. 41
Green Ash, Red Maple, Black Gum
Michael Waters
No. 42
Against Distance
Peter Makuck
No. 43
The Night Path
Laurie Kutchins
No. 44
Radiography
Bruce Bond
No. 45
At My Ease: Uncollected Poems of the Fifties and Sixties
David Ignatow
No. 46
Trillium
Richard Foerster
No. 47
Fuel
Naomi Shihab Nye
No. 48
Gratitude
Sam Hamill
No. 49
Diana, Charles, & the Queen
William Heyen
No. 50
Plus Shipping
Bob Hicok
No. 51
Cabato Sentora
Ray Gonzalez
No. 52
We Didn’t Come Here for This
William B. Patrick
No. 53
The Vandals
Alan Michael Parker
No. 54
To Get Here
Wendy Mnookin
No. 55
Living Is What I Wanted: Last Poems
David Ignatow
No. 56
Dusty Angel
Michael Blumenthal
No. 57
The Tiger Iris
Joan Swift
No. 58
White City
Mark Irwin
No. 59
Laugh at the End of the World: Collected Comic Poems 1969–1999
Bill Knott
No. 60
Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems: 1988–2000
Lucille Clifton
No. 61
Tell Me
Kim Addonizio
No. 62
Smoke
Dorianne Laux
No. 63
Parthenopi: New and Selected Poems
Michael Waters
No. 64
Rancho Notorious
Richard Garcia
No. 65
Jam
Joe-Anne McLaughlin
No. 66
A. Poulin, Jr. Selected Poems
Edited, with an Introduction by Michael Waters
No. 67
Small Gods of Grief
Laure-Anne Bosselaar
No. 68
Book of My Nights
Li-Young Lee
No. 69
Tulip Farms and Leper Colonies
Charles Harper Webb
No. 70
Double Going
Richard Foerster
No. 71
What He Took
Wendy Mnookin
No. 72
The Hawk Temple at Tierra Grande
Ray Gonzalez
No. 73
Mules of Love
Ellen Bass
No. 74
The Guests at the Gate
Anthony Piccione
No. 75
Dumb Luck
Sam Hamill
No. 76
Love Song with Motor Vehicles
Alan Michael Parker
No. 77
Life Watch
Willis Barnstone
No. 78
The Owner of the House: New Collected Poems 1940–2001
Louis Simpson
No. 79
Is
Wayne Dodd
No. 80
Late
Cecilia Woloch
No. 81
Precipitates
Debra Kang Dean
No. 82
The Orchard
Brigit Pegeen Kelly
No. 83
Bright Hunger
Mark Irwin
No. 84
Desire Lines: New and Selected Poems
Lola Haskins
No. 85
Curious Conduct
Jeanne Marie Beaumont
No. 86
Mercy
Lucille Clifton
No. 87
Model Homes
Wayne Koestenbaum
No. 88
Farewell to the Starlight in Whiskey
Barton Sutter
No. 89
Angels for the Burning
David Mura
No. 90
The Rooster’s Wife
Russell Edson
No. 91
American Children
Jim Simmerman
No. 92
Postcards from the Interior
Wyn Cooper
No. 93
You & Yours
Naomi Shihab Nye
No. 94
Consideration of the Guitar: New and Selected Poems 1986–2005
Ray Gonzalez
No. 95
Off-Season in the Promised Land
Peter Makuck
No. 96
The Hoopoe’s Crown
Jacqueline Osherow
No. 97
Not for Specialists: New and Selected Poems
W. D. Snodgrass
No. 98
Splendor
Steve Kronen
No. 99
Woman Crossing a Field
Deena Linett
No. 100
The Burning of Troy
Richard Foerster
No. 101
Darling Vulgarity
Michael Waters
No. 102
The Persistence of Objects
Richard Garcia
No. 103
Slope of the Child Everlasting
Laurie Kutchins
No. 104
Broken Hallelujahs
Sean Thomas Dougherty
No. 105
Peeping Tom’s Cabin: Comic Verse 1928–2008
X. J. Kennedy
No. 106
Disclamor
G.C. Waldrep
No. 107
Encouragement for a Man Falling to His Death
Christopher Kennedy
No. 108
Sleeping with Houdini
Nin Andrews
No. 109
Nomina
Karen Volkman
No. 110
The Fortieth Day
Kazim Ali
No. 111
Elephants & Butterflies
Alan Michael Parker
No. 112
Voices
Lucille Clifton
No. 113
The Moon Makes Its Own Plea
Wendy Mnookin
No. 114
The Heaven-Sent Leaf
Katy Lederer
No. 115
Struggling Times
Louis Simpson
No. 116
And
Michael Blumenthal
No. 117
Carpathia
Cecilia Woloch
No. 118
Seasons of Lotus, Seasons of Bone
Matthew Shenoda
No. 119
Sharp Stars
Sharon Bryan
No. 120
Cool Auditor
Ray Gonzalez
No. 121
Long Lens: New and Selected Poems
Peter Makuck
No. 122
Chaos Is the New Calm
Wyn Cooper
No. 123
Diwata
Barbara Jane Reyes
No. 124
Burning of the Three Fires
Jeanne Marie Beaumont
No. 125
Sasha Sings the Laundry on the Line
Sean Thomas Dougherty
No. 126
Your Father on the Train of Ghosts
G.C. Waldrep and John
Gallaher
No. 127
Ennui Prophet
Christopher Kennedy
No. 128
Transfer
Naomi Shihab Nye
No. 129
Gospel Night
Michael Waters
No. 130
The Hands of Strangers: Poems from the Nursing Home
Janice N. Harrington
No. 131
Kingdom Animalia
Aracelis Girmay
No. 132
True Faith
Ira Sadoff
No. 133
The Reindeer Camps and Other Poems
Barton Sutter
No. 134
The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965–2010