Kirjahaku

How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton celebrates both familiar and lesser-known works by one of America’s most beloved poets, including 10 newly discovered poems that have never been collected. These poems celebrating black womanhood and resilience shimmer with intellect, insight, humor, and joy, all in Clifton’s characteristic style—a voice that the late Toni Morrison described as “seductive with the simplicity of an atom, which is to say highly complex, explosive underneath an apparent quietude.” Selected and introduced by award-winning poet Aracelis Girmay, this volume of Clifton’s poetry is simultaneously timeless and fitting for today’s tumultuous moment.

How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton celebrates both familiar and lesser-known works by one of America’s most beloved poets, including 10 newly discovered poems that have never been collected. These poems celebrating black womanhood and resilience shimmer with intellect, insight, humor, and joy, all in Clifton’s characteristic style—a voice that the late Toni Morrison described as “seductive with the simplicity of an atom, which is to say highly complex, explosive underneath an apparent quietude.” Selected and introduced by award-winning poet Aracelis Girmay, this volume of Clifton’s poetry is simultaneously timeless and fitting for today’s tumultuous moment.

Plainspoken, empowering, spare, wise beyond measure, Clifton’s words are a balm and a force of good for all: “The surest failure / is the unattempted walk.”Tracy K. Smith took a poetry workshop with Lucille Clifton following the death of her mother. The experience was an awakening. Clifton spoke of her own losses, centering not on the ideas of “letting go” or “making peace,” but of sustained communication with the departed. Clifton’s practices included using the Ouija board, or “spirit board,” as she called it, to make contact with the other world. “I sat rapt, envious, hopeful,” Smith writes, “listening to Clifton describe her own initiation into a fierce and forthright form of knowing.” Smith’s selections offer a gateway into the profound, moving, accessible, and useful notions of this essential poet. The Divining Poets Quotable Deck Series: Elegant, boxed sets of seventy-eight cards à la tarot decks, with oracular quotes from the world’s greatest visionary poets. Each card contains inspiring and provocative lines chosen for seekers to contemplate, memorize, or answer life questions. Complete with a display stand and how-to instructions, this pocket-sized wisdom is perfect for the holiday season

There is nothing Tee enjoys more than sitting out on the porch with her great-greatmother, listening to the fascinating stories about the lucky stone. Shiny and black as night, it brought good fortune to each of its owners for over one hundred years. First it helped Mandy, a runaway slave, win her freedom. Then it saved Vashti from death by lightning at a prayer meeting. And it even saved Tee's great-grandmother from the ferocious dancing dog and helped her meet her husband. Now Tee can't help wondering what the old stone has in store for her. She certainly could use some luck on Valentine's Day. But the lucky stone doesn't belong to Tee. How can her wish come true?

Winner of the Coretta Scott King Author AwardA Reading Rainbow SelectionEverett Anderson's Goodbye is a touching portrait of a little boy who is trying to come to grips with his father's death. Lucille Clifton captures Everett's conflicting emotions as he confronts this painful reality. We see him struggle through many stages, from denial and anger to depression and, finally, acceptance. In this spare and moving poem, the last in this acclaimed series, Lucille Clifton brings Everett Anderson's life full circle. An NCTE Teachers' Choice

Finalist for the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry A landmark collection by one of America's major black poets, Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980 includes all of Lucille Clifton's first four published collections of extraordinary vibrant poetry-Good Times, Good News About the Earth, An Ordinary Woman, and Two-Headed Woman-as well as her haunting prose memoir, Generations.

Brilliantly honed language, sharp rhythms and striking syntax empower Lucille Clifton's personal and artistic odyssey. Hers is poetry of birth, death, children, community, history, sexuality and spirituality, and she addresses these themes with passion, humor, anger and spiritual awe.

The long-awaited tenth collection of poetry from the Shelley Memorial Prize-winning poet Lucille Clifton.

Nineteen new poems as well as selections from the author's earlier collections explore human suffering, the tragedy of violence, and theological mysteries.

At the Gate gathers more than seventy previously unpublished poems by the iconic American poet Lucille Clifton written over the last two decades of her life. Discovered in digital archives by poet and scholar Kazim Ali, these poems span a prolific and reflective period in Clifton’s career as she shifted from typewriters to word processors and desktop computers. Many were originally drafted for publication, but set aside—until now. Edited by Ali, this collection includes a contextual Foreword and detailed notes that illuminate Clifton’s late writing process and the editorial journey of these poems—deepening and expanding the themes that defined Clifton’s celebrated body of work. At the Gate is a profound and necessary addition to Clifton’s legacy—one that reaffirms her place as a poet of the body, the spirit, and the deep truths that we must endure—her voice as intimate, fearless, and luminous as ever.

At the Gate gathers more than seventy previously unpublished poems by the iconic American poet Lucille Clifton written over the last two decades of her life. Discovered in digital archives by poet and scholar Kazim Ali, these poems span a prolific and reflective period in Clifton's career as she shifted from typewriters to word processors and desktop computers. Many were originally drafted for publication, but set aside-until now. Edited by Ali, this collection includes a contextual Foreword and detailed notes that illuminate Clifton's late writing process and the editorial journey of these poems-deepening and expanding the themes that defined Clifton's celebrated body of work. At the Gate is a profound and necessary addition to Clifton's legacy-one that reaffirms her place as a poet of the body, the spirit, and the deep truths that we must endure-her voice as intimate, fearless, and luminous as ever.

Lucille Clifton's poetry carries her deep concerns for the world's children, the stratification of American society, those people lost or forgotten amid the crushing race of Western materialism and technology. In turns sad, troubled and angry, her voice has always been one of great empathy, knowing, as she says, "the only mercy is memory." In this, her 12th book of poetry, the National Book Award-winner speaks to the tenuous relationship between mothers and daughters, the debilitating power of cancer, the open wound of racial prejudice, the redemptive gift of story-telling. "September Song," a sequence of seven poems, featured on National Public Radio, presents a modern-day Orpheus who, through her grief, attempts to heart-intelligently respond to the events of September 11th. The last sequence of poems-a tightly-woven fabric of caveats and prayers-was initially written in the 1970s, then revised and reshaped in the last few years. Lucille Clifton is an award-winning poet, fiction writer and author of children's books. Her most recent poetry book, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1969-1999 (BOA), won the 2000 National Book Award for Poetry. Two of Clifton's BOA poetry collections, Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980 and Next: New Poems, were chosen as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in 1988, while Clifton's The Terrible Stories (BOA) was a finalist for the 1996 National Book Award. Clifton has received fellowships from the NEA, an Emmy Award from the American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Shelley Memorial Prize and the Charity Randall Citation. She is a Distinguished Professor of Humanities as St. Mary's College in Maryland. She was appointed a Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and elected as Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets in 1999. She lives in Columbia, MD.