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Lucille Clifton (1936–2010)

Autor(a) de Everett Anderson's Goodbye

47+ Works 2,757 Membros 114 Críticas 6 Favorited

About the Author

Lucille Clifton was born in Depew, New York on June 27, 1936. She was the first person in her family to graduate from high school. She attended Howard University, where she majored in drama, for two years before deciding that she would rather write poetry. Her first poetry collection Good Times was mostrar mais published in 1969. During her lifetime, she wrote 11 books of poetry and 20 children's books. She won numerous awards including the Coretta Scott King Award for Everett Anderson's Good-bye in 1984, the National Book Award for Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000 in 2001, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize award in 2007. She was the Poet Laureate of Maryland from 1979 to 1985. She died after a long battle with cancer and other illnesses on February 13, 2010 at the age of 73. (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos

Séries

Obras por Lucille Clifton

Everett Anderson's Goodbye (1983) 454 exemplares
The Book of Light (1993) 178 exemplares
The Lucky Stone (1979) 162 exemplares
Generations: A Memoir (1976) 88 exemplares
Three Wishes (1809) 84 exemplares
Mercy (2004) 55 exemplares
Everett Anderson's Friend (1976) 40 exemplares
My Friend Jacob: (1980) 40 exemplares
Everett Anderson's Year (1974) 34 exemplares
The Times They Used to Be (1974) 33 exemplares
Voices (American Poets Continuum) (2008) 27 exemplares
Everett Anderson's 1-2-3 (1977) 23 exemplares
The Black BC's (1970) 16 exemplares
Amifika (1977) 15 exemplares
Good times; poems (1969) 13 exemplares
Don't You Remember? (1985) 12 exemplares
Two-Headed Woman (1980) 11 exemplares
An ordinary woman (1974) 8 exemplares
All Us Come Cross the Water (1973) 8 exemplares
Good, says Jerome (1973) 5 exemplares
My brother fine with me (1975) 5 exemplares
Sonora Beautiful (1981) 4 exemplares
Ten oxherding pictures (1988) 1 exemplar
An ordinary woman 1 exemplar
Homage to My Hips 1 exemplar
sorrows 1 exemplar

Associated Works

The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms (2000) — Contribuidor — 1,254 exemplares
Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry (2003) — Contribuidor — 765 exemplares
Free to Be... You and Me (1974) — Contribuidor — 480 exemplares
Sisters of the Earth: Women's Prose and Poetry About Nature (1991) — Contribuidor — 397 exemplares
Contemporary American Poetry (1962) — Contribuidor, algumas edições384 exemplares
Cries of the Spirit: A Celebration of Women's Spirituality (2000) — Contribuidor — 370 exemplares
The Black Poets (1983) — Contribuidor — 353 exemplares
The Best American Poetry 2000 (2000) — Contribuidor — 213 exemplares
The Best American Poetry 1999 (1999) — Contribuidor — 208 exemplares
Soul Looks Back in Wonder (1993) — Contribuidor — 204 exemplares
Wise Women: Over Two Thousand Years of Spiritual Writing by Women (1996) — Contribuidor — 201 exemplares
The Art of Losing (2010) — Contribuidor — 197 exemplares
African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song (2020) — Contribuidor — 169 exemplares
American Religious Poems: An Anthology (2006) — Contribuidor — 162 exemplares
The Vintage Book of African American Poetry (2000) — Contribuidor — 141 exemplares
No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women (1973) — Contribuidor — 122 exemplares
The Penguin Book of Women's Humour (1996) — Contribuidor — 117 exemplares
Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (2009) — Contribuidor — 113 exemplares
Poems from the Women's Movement (2009) — Contribuidor — 105 exemplares
The 100 Best African American Poems (2010) — Contribuidor — 96 exemplares
Tenderheaded: A Comb-Bending Collection of Hair Stories (2001) — Contribuidor — 91 exemplares
Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation (1984) — Contribuidor — 77 exemplares
Gods and Mortals: Modern Poems on Classical Myths (1684) — Contribuidor — 68 exemplares
Memory of Kin: Stories About Family by Black Writers (1990) — Contribuidor — 65 exemplares
The Hungry Ear: Poems of Food and Drink (2012) — Contribuidor — 63 exemplares
The Ecopoetry Anthology (2013) — Contribuidor — 48 exemplares
Sisterfire: Black Womanist Fiction and Poetry (1994) — Contribuidor — 46 exemplares
I Hear a Symphony: African Americans Celebrate Love (1994) — Contribuidor — 33 exemplares
Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade (2006) — Contribuidor — 30 exemplares
Pathetic Literature (2022) — Contribuidor — 24 exemplares
Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women (1983) — Contribuidor — 22 exemplares
The Poetry Cure (2005) — Contribuidor — 19 exemplares
Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology (2018) — Contribuidor — 9 exemplares
Handspan of Red Earth: An Anthology of American Farm Poems (1991) — Contribuidor — 7 exemplares
Humor Me: An Anthology of Humor by Writers of Color (2002) — Contribuidor — 4 exemplares
Cricket Magazine, Vol. 8, No. 9, May 1981 (1981) — Contribuidor — 3 exemplares
Between Paradise & Earth: Eve Poems (2023) — Contribuidor — 1 exemplar

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Nome legal
Clifton, Thelma Lucille Sayles
Outros nomes
Clifton, Lucille
Data de nascimento
1936-06-27
Data de falecimento
2010-02-13
Sexo
female
Nacionalidade
USA
Local de nascimento
Depew, New York, USA
Local de falecimento
Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Locais de residência
Depew, New York, USA (birth)
New York, USA
Columbia, Maryland, USA
Educação
Howard University (Washington, DC, age 16)
Fredonia State Teachers College (1955)
Ocupações
poet
author
children's book author
writer in residence (Coppin State College ∙ Baltimore ∙ Maryland ∙ 1971)
Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets (1999)
poet laureate (State of Maryland ∙ 1979-1982) (mostrar todos 9)
Distinguished Professor of Humanities (St. Mary's College of Maryland)
claims clerk (New York State Division of Employment ∙ Buffalo ∙ 1958-1960)
literature assistant (Office of Education ∙ Washington ∙ D.C. ∙ 1960-1971)
Prémios e menções honrosas
Shelley Memorial Award (1991/1992)
Lannan Literary Award (Poetry ∙ 1996)
National Book Award (2000)
Pulitzer Prize Nomination (1987)
University of Massachusetts Press Juniper Prize (1980)
Emmy Award from the American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (mostrar todos 10)
two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts
YM-YWHA Poetry Center Discovery Award
Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (2007)
Frost Medal (2010)

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Lucille Clifton was born in Depew, New York. Named after her great-grandmother who, according to her father, was the first black woman to be legally hanged in the state of Virginia, she was raised with two half-sisters and a brother. Growing up, she recalls hearing the word 'nigger'. She knew that it wasn't her, and she thought, "'Well, I'll have to suspect everything they say, won't I?' And I've always been a very curious person, interested in a lot of things, and, so, in writing, I never thought I would be a poet" (qtd in Davis).

Clifton was awarded a scholarship to Howard University, becoming the first person in her family to finish high school and consider college, entering as a drama major. After two years she lost her scholarship and told her father, "I don't need that stuff. I'm going to write poems. I can do what I want to do! I'm from Dahomey women!" It was at this point that Clifton's writing began.

In a writer's group she met a man named Ishmael Reed, who showed some of her poems to Langston Hughes. He was the first to publish Clifton, premiering her work in the anthology Poetry of the Negro. Her first complete book of poems, Good Times, was published in 1969. She has been twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her first children's book, Some of the Days of Everett Anderson (1970), launched her into writing children's stories. Clifton was recently interviewed as part of "The Language of Life," with Bill Moyers, a major video series exploring the American phenomenon of public poetry. She has been honored as Poet Laureate of Maryland, and currently teaches as a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary's College of Maryland.

Lucille's poetry is straightforward and makes use of vernacular speech. Her poems contain compassion and a high level of emotion, which is uniquely American. Her African roots and her personal history have become the basis of her writing. Other common themes include family, death, birth, and religion. She says, "the proper subject matter for poetry is life" (qtd in Davis). She asserts that the reason to write poetry is to assert the importance of being human.

http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Bios/ent...

Membros

Críticas

Clifton experienced so much darkness in her life, and it comes vividly through in her poetry. While she is brilliant, I cannot enjoy very much of her work in a short amount of time. Too much pain.
 
Assinalado
Treebeard_404 | Jan 23, 2024 |
Somehow Blessing the Boats was the first Lucille Clifton collection I have read, which is EMBARRASSING, as I have been intending to read her for ages (and have certainly read isolated poems of hers here and there.)

Her writing is spare and accessible and razor sharp, exemplified by a poem like "why some people be mad at me sometimes"
they ask me to remember
but they want me to remember
their memories
and i keep on remembering
mine

I didn't quite fall all the way in love with these, which is I think largely because this is a collection from collections (which I somehow didn't realize when I picked this up). These cherry-picked "best of" collections many have isolated favorites, but I almost always prefer encountering the poems in their home collections, like listening to songs in their original albums rather than a "Best Of" CD. The context is missing.

I will have to pick up one of those soon.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
greeniezona | 3 outras críticas | Dec 3, 2023 |
Excellent. Love her voice. Looking forward to the next collection.
 
Assinalado
Kiramke | Jun 27, 2023 |
A young girl is convinced everyone in her family makes promises to her that only she remembers

Lucille Clifton was an American poet, writer, and educator from New York.
Common topics in her poetry include the celebration of her African American heritage,
and feminist themes, with particular emphasis on the female body
Good Times, her first book of poems, was published in 1969. She has since
been honored as Maryland's Poet Laureate.
 
Assinalado
CarrieFortuneLibrary | 1 outra crítica | Sep 12, 2022 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
47
Also by
50
Membros
2,757
Popularidade
#9,302
Avaliação
4.0
Críticas
114
ISBN
128
Línguas
2
Marcado como favorito
6

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