by Lucille Clifton
My poetry life is a lot newer than my fiction life, and one delightful thing they have in common is that they take on a life of their own, and I find myself led from one work to another. I can’t remember where I ran across a heart-stopping poem by Lucille Clifton, whom I had never heard of – probably in an anthology. But I wrote down her name and looked for this book at the library soon after.
Clifton was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and has been called “one of America’s major Black poets.” Discovered by Langston Hughes and first published in an anthology in 1970 (The Poetry of the Negro), her voice opens up a perspective on a community and an era that is new to me. And I’m sure her work will lead me to other poets I will be glad to have found.