Lucille Clifton was the first author to have two books of poetry chosen as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969-1980 (1987) and Next: New Poems (1987). Her collection Two-Headed Woman (1980) was also a Pulitzer nominee and won the Juniper Prize from the University of Massachusetts. She served as the state of Maryland’s poet laureate from 1974 until 1985, and won the prestigious National Book Award for Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000 (2000). In addition to her numerous poetry collections, she wrote many children’s books. Clifton was a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Poetry
Winter 1993
[Each Morning I Pull Myself]
each morning i pull myself out of despair from a night of coals and a tongue blistered with smiling the step past the mother bed is a high step the […]
Poetry
Winter 1993
Them and Us
something in their psyche insists on elvis slouching into markets, his great collar high around his great head, his sideburns extravagant, elvis, still swiveling those negro hips. something needs to […]
Poetry
Winter 1993
leda 3: a personal note (re: visitations)
always pyrotechnics; stars spinning into phalluses of light, serpents promising sweetness, their forked tongues thick and erect, patriarchs of bird exposing themselves in the air. this skin is sick with […]
Weekend Reads
[each morning i pull myself]
From The Kenyon Review, New Series, Winter 1993, Vol. XV, No. 1 each morning i pull myself out of despair from a night of coals and a tongue blistered with […]