Lucille Clifton

"born in babylon both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself?"

"Other than “the unanswerable question”… It’s the heart speaking, maybe that, maybe the human heart speaking."

"… A lot of women have borne a lot of things; a lot of people have borne a lot of things. There’s a certain kind of human that I want to be. There is not shame in my life. There is certainly misfortune, but I’m not the only one. I do know that. And sometimes, one of the things poetry can do is say to an audience: you are not alone. It can also speak for those who have not yet found their voice to speak. That’s part of the human condition. And if we’re going to talk about humans, why are we just going to talk about the pretty ones."

"… I am a grown-up, sensual woman, even at this age and size. People would think you wouldn't be. I'm open to the whole of human experience."

"One thing poetry teaches us, if anything, is that everything is connected…There is so much history that we have not validated."

"(The book that...shaped my worldview:) Lucille Clifton’s poetry collection Good Woman. I have long considered her the secret godmother of my writing since I was 15, and this was the first collection of hers I owned."

"Lucille Clifton is able to do something difficult: take the strengths of poetry and apply them in such a way that you have first-rate prose."

"I would also suggest that everyone read the poetry of Lucille Clifton, a black heterodox Christian woman who seems to me the most important spiritual poet in America today."

"Lucille stayed late, singing the song of/carrying on, admitting the truth.../"Things don't fall apart. Things hold. Lines connect/in thin ways that last and last . . ."/Lucille gave everything she had."

"People I read a lot to my son were people like Robert Bly and Lucille Clifton, Frank O’Hara for some reason, Chinese poems, Japanese poems."

"One of my favorite poets is Lucille Clifton, author of a good number of fine books, including Blessing the Boats, Quilting, and Two-Headed Woman."

"Food in these poems is a connection to the natural world, to what Lucille Clifton calls "the bond of live things everywhere" in her poem, "cutting greens.""