Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton
Lucille Clifton was an American poet, writer, and educator from Buffalo, New York. From 1979 to 1985 she was Poet Laureate of Maryland. Clifton was nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize for poetry...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth27 June 1936
CityDepew, NY
CountryUnited States of America
eye pairs endure
Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.
matter language poetry-is
Poetry is a matter of life, not just a matter of language.
loneliness eye bird
We need new words for what this is, this hunger entering our loneliness like birds, stunning our eyes into rays of hope. we need the flutter that can save us, something that will swirl across the face of what we have become and bring us grace.
thinking sky poetry
I think that were beginning to remember that the first poets didn't come out of a classroom, that poetry began when somebody walked off of a savanna or out of a cave and looked up at the sky with wonder and said, "Ahhh." That was the first poem.
imagine
We cannot create what we can't imagine.
adversity break made
Even when the universe made it quite clear to me that I was mistaken in my certainties ... I did not break. The shattering of my sureties did not shatter me.
different asking bigger
In the bigger scheme of things the universe is not asking us to do something, the universe is asking us to be something. And that's a whole different thing.
memories want remember
they ask me to remember but they want me to remember their memories and I keep on remembering mine
writing simple ideas
I write from my knowledge not my lack, from my strength not my weakness. I am not interested if anyone knows whether or not I am familiar with big words, I am interested in trying to render big ideas in a simple way. I am interested in being understood not admired.
crazy mean diversity
I do not feel inhibited or bound by what I am. That does not mean that I have never had bad scenes relating to being Black and/or a woman, it means that other people’s craziness has not managed to make me crazy.
answers one-thing
What they call you is one thing. What you answer to is something else.
children doors answers
You might as well answer the door, my child, the truth is furiously knocking.
mistake writing hymns
People wish to be poets more than they wish to write poetry, and that's a mistake. One should wish to celebrate more than one wishes to be celebrated.