https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lucille-Clifton

​Won't You Celebrate With Me

The Poetry of Lucille Clifton
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​Clifton’s poetics of understatement—no capitalization, few strong stresses per line, many poems totaling fewer than twenty lines, the sharp rhetorical question—includes the essential only.

Robin Becker

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Follow the grain in your own wood.

Howard Thurman

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My God, help me believe the truth about myself no matter how beautiful it is.

Macrina Wiedekehr


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Lucille Clifton: A Poet's Life and Legacy
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won't you celebrate with me
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homage to hips

roots

by Lucille Clifton *

                          call it our craziness even, 
                          call it anything.
                          it is the life thing in us 
                          that will not let us die. 
                          even in death’s hand
                          we fold the fingers up
                          and call them greens and
                          grow on them,
                          we hum them and make music.
                          call it our wildness then,
                          we are lost from the field
                          of flowers, we become
                          a field of flowers.
                          call it our craziness
                          our wildness
                          call it our roots,
                          it is the light in us
                          it is the light of us
                          it is the light, call it
                          whatever you have to,
                          call it anything.

 Lucille Clifton's roots is published from an essay by Mark Statman in Poetry Foundation,
encouraging its use in the classroom. Click here.

Blessing the Boats
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Interview with Lucille Clifton
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Lucille Clifton reading three poems
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What Poetry Is
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