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
clear mistaken quite shatter stability universe
. . . even when the universe made it quite clear to me that I was mistaken in my certainties, in my definitions, I did not break. The shattering of my sureties did not shatter me. Stability comes from inside, not outside....
ask mama
children/ when they ask you/ why your mama so funny/ say/ she is a poet/ she don't have no sense.
eye kissing blessing
blessing the boats (at saint mary’s) may the tide that is entering even now the lip of our understanding carry you out beyond the face of fear may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back may you open your eyes to water water waving forever and may you in your innocence sail through this to that
baby years ends
The end of a thing, is never the end, something is always being born like a year of a baby.
intelligence intuition doe
Intellect doesn't translate across cultures; intuition does.
letting-go running new-year
I am running into a new year and the old years blow back like a wind that I catch in my hair like strong fingers like all my old promises and it will be hard to let go of what I said to myself about myself when I was sixteen and twenty-six and thirty-six but I am running into a new year and I beg what i love and I leave to forgive me.
black sound black-women
I am a black woman poet and I sound like one.
children life-is telling-the-truth
telling the truth about children's lives is radical.
girl mother husband
If i should enter the house and speak with my own voice, at last, about its awful furnitutre, pulling apart the covering over the dusty bodies; the randy father, the husband holding ice in his hand like a blessing, the mother bleeding into herself and the small imploding girl, i say if i should walk into that web, who will come flying after me, leaping tall buildings? you?
funny children mama
Children when they ask you why your mama so funny say she is a poet she don't have no sense
accepting call-me
I don't go get a poem. It calls me and I accept it.
healing telling-the-truth
Tell the truth... maybe just to see clearly, as clearly as possible.
dream fields mama
My Mama Moved Among the Days My Mama moved among the days like a dreamwalker in a field; seemed like what she touched was here seemed like what touched her couldn't hold, she got us almost through the high grass then seemed like she turned around and ran right back in right back on in
believe son thinking
wishes for sons by Lucille Clifton i wish them cramps. i wish them a strange town and the last tampon. I wish them no 7-11. i wish them one week early and wearing a white skirt. i wish them one week late. later i wish them hot flashes and clots like you wouldn't believe. let the flashes come when they meet someone special. let the clots come when they want to. let them think they have accepted arrogance in the universe, then bring them to gynecologists not unlike themselves.