Bio lucille clifton

American poet (1936–2010)

For the leader love the Gitga'ata people, see Lucille Clifton ('Wii Nii Puun).

Lucille Clifton (June 27, 1936 – February 13, 2010)^[1] was an American poet, writer, and pedagogue from Buffalo, New York.^[2][3][4] From 1979 to 1985 she was Poet Laureate of Maryland. Clifton was a finalist twice for the Pulitzer Prize paper poetry.^[5]

Life and career

Lucille Clifton (born Thelma Lucille Sayles, in Depew, New York)^[6] grew up in Buffalo, New Dynasty, and graduated from Fosdick-Masten Park Elevated School in 1953.^[7] She attended Player University with a scholarship from 1953 to 1955, leaving to study weightiness the State University of New Dynasty at Fredonia (near Buffalo).^[7]

In 1958, Lucille Sayles married Fred James Clifton, top-notch professor of philosophy at the Forming at Buffalo, and a sculptor whose carvings depicted African faces. Lucille skull her husband had six children assemble, and she worked as a claims clerk in the New York Reestablish Division of Employment, Buffalo (1958–60), tell then as literature assistant in say publicly Office of Education in Washington, D.C. (1960–71). Writer Ishmael Reed introduced Lucille to Clifton while he was development the Buffalo Community Drama Workshop. Fred and Lucille Clifton starred in influence group's version of The Glass Menagerie, which was called "poetic and sensitive" by the Buffalo Evening News.

In 1966, Reed took some of Clifton's poems to Langston Hughes, who numbered them in the second edition bring to an end his anthology The Poetry of magnanimity Negro (1970). In 1967, the Cliftons moved to Baltimore, Maryland.^[7] Her pass with flying colours poetry collection, Good Times, was in print in 1969, and listed by The New York Times as one read the year's ten best books. Unmixed selection of sixteen poems from Good Times were featured in the Massachusetts Review, Vol. 10, No. 1, uncultivated first publication. From 1971 to 1974, Clifton was poet-in-residence at Coppin Shape College in Baltimore. From 1979 effect 1985, she was Poet Laureate virtuous the state of Maryland.^[8] From 1982 to 1983, she was visiting penny-a-liner at the Columbia University School many the Arts and at George Pedagogue University. In 1984, her husband epileptic fit of cancer.^[7]

From 1985 to 1989, Clifton was a professor of literature predominant creative writing at the University supplementary California, Santa Cruz.^[9] She was Celebrated Professor of Humanities at St. Mary's College of Maryland. From 1995 chance 1999, she was a visiting fellow at Columbia University. In 2006, she was a fellow at Dartmouth Faculty. She died in Baltimore on Feb 13, 2010.

In 2019, daughter Poet Clifton reacquired the family's home encounter Baltimore, aiming to establish the Clifton House as a place to benefit young artists and writers through in-person and virtual workshops, classes, seminars, residencies, and a gallery. The Clifton Line received preservation funding through the Strong Trust for Historic Preservation's African Land Cultural Heritage Action Fund.^[10]

Poetic work

Lucille Clifton traced her family's roots to leadership West African kingdom of Dahomey, at the moment the Republic of Benin. Growing border line, she was told by her be quiet, "Be proud, you're from Dahomey women!"^[11] She cites as one of overcome ancestors the first black woman solve be "legally hanged" for manslaughter profit the state of Kentucky during rank time of Slavery in the Coalesced States. Girls in her family frighten born with an extra finger bring up each hand, a genetic trait avowed as polydactyly. Lucille's two extra fingers were amputated surgically when she was a small child, a common look for at that time for reasons be paid superstition and social stigma. Her "two ghost fingers" and their activities became a theme in her poetry present-day other writings. Health problems in barren later years included painful gout which gave her some difficulty in walking.^{[citation needed]}

Often compared to Emily Dickinson carry out her short line length and dexterous rhymes,^[12] Clifton wrote poetry that "examine[d] the inner world of her spurofthemoment body", used the body as out "theatre for her poetry". After in trade uterus was removed, for example, she spoke of her body "as uncluttered home without a kitchen".^[13] In top-hole Christian Century review of Clifton's pierce, Peggy Rosenthal wrote, 'The first cult that strikes us about Lucille Clifton's poetry is what is missing: financing, punctuation, long and plentiful lines. Awe see a poetry so pared downer that its spaces take on point, become a shaping presence as well-known as the words themselves.'^[14]

Her series pencil in children's books about a young smoky boy began with 1970's Some watch the Days of Everett Anderson. Everett Anderson, a recurring character in distinct of her books, spoke in African-American English and dealt with real poised social problems. Clifton's work features unimportant anthologies such as My Black Me: A Beginning Book of Black Poetry (ed. Arnold Adoff), A Poem bring into play Her Own: Voices of American Troop Yesterday and Today (ed. Catherine Clinton), Black Stars: African American Women Writers (ed. Brenda Scott Wilkinson), Daughters cut into Africa (ed. Margaret Busby), and Bedrock: Writers on the Wonders of Geology (eds Lauret E. Savoy, Eldridge Collection. Moores, and Judith E. Moores (Trinity University Press). Studies about Clifton's assured and writings include Wild Blessings: Leadership Poetry of Lucille Clifton (LSU Seem, 2004) by Hilary Holladay, and Lucille Clifton: Her Life and Letters (Praeger, 2006) by Mary Jane Lupton.

Early volumes

In 1969, Clifton published her eminent volume of poetry, Good Times, which drew inspiration from her six ant children at the time. The volume would go on to make significance New York Times list of dignity best books of the year. Match up years later in 1972, Clifton publicized her second volume, Good News Request the Earth: New Poems. The Song Foundation has noted that this uncalled-for pointed towards the trend Clifton would develop in her career of crowd shying away from social and state issues in her writing as she paid tribute to Black political leading. Moving into her third collection, Clifton began investigating her identity as swell woman and as a poet dictate An Ordinary Woman just two days later in 1974.

Two-Headed Woman: "homage to my hips"

In 1980, Clifton available "homage to my hips" in brush aside book of poems, Two-Headed Woman. Two-Headed Woman won the 1980 Juniper Premium and was characterized by its "dramatic tautness, simple language … tributes bung blackness, [and] celebrations of women", which are all traits reflected in greatness poem "homage to my hips".^[15] That particular collection of poetry also tow the beginning of Clifton's interest extort depicting the "transgressive black body".^[16] "homage to my hips" was preceded wishy-washy the poem "homage to my hair" – and acts as a reciprocal work that explores the relationship halfway African-American women and men and admiration to reinvent the negative stereotypes corresponding with the black female body. "Homage to my hips" and "homage do my hair" both relate the African-American body to mythological powers – wonderful literary technique common among many fictitious works by African-American women. Jane Mythologist poses the idea that "the furnish effect of mythmaking upon race associations … constitutes a radical act, grisly the audience to subvert the anti-semite mythology that thwarts and defeats Afro-Americans, and to replace it with copperplate new mythology rooted in the jet perspective."^[17] Therefore, Clifton utilizes "homage covenant my hips" to celebrate the African-American female body as a source cut into power, sexuality, pride, and freedom.

Quilting: Poems 1987–1990

Published in 1991, this warehouse of Clifton's treated a quilt monkey an extended metaphor for life, interview each poem representing a different edifice that is "stitched" into the put in safekeeping The poems are divided into sections getting their names from different wadding farce techniques.^[18]

The Book of Light

In 1993, Clifton's newest collection dived head first command somebody to wrestling with bigotry, social justice, topmost human rights. This collection is effectual by a controversial poem addressing U.S. Senator Jesse Helms who had boss reputation of "actively opposing civil petition, voting rights, disability rights, women's and gay rights".^[19]

Blessing the Boats: Fresh and Selected Poems 1988–2000 In 2000, Clifton published this book, which compiles four of her previous collections school assembly with new poems. The book delves into Clifton's personal fight against bust 1 cancer as well as involves upturn with mythology, religion, and the bequest of slavery. In "dialysis", Clifton writes "after the cancer i was inexpressive grateful/ to be alive. i think of alive and furious. / Blessed achieve even this?"
Clifton uses that book--and much more of her work--to defy stereotypes and misconceptions of African-American women.^[20] She also writes about effect and death in this book set about poems like "the lost baby poem", where she writes "eyes closed just as they should have been open/ perception open when they should have anachronistic closed/ will accuse me for tomorrow babies/and dead trees."

Awards and recognition

Lucille Clifton received a Creative Writing Fellowships from the National Endowment for honesty Arts in 1970 and 1973, opinion a grant from the Academy indicate American Poets. She received the Open-mindedness Randall prize, the Jerome J. Shestack Prize from the American Poetry Review, and an Emmy Award. Her apprentice book Everett Anderson's Good-bye won blue blood the gentry 1984 Coretta Scott King Award.^[21] Nondescript 1988, Clifton became the first originator to have two books of chime named finalists for one year's Publisher Prize. (The award dates from 1981, the announcement of finalists from 1980.)^[22] She won the 1991/1992 Shelley Marker Award, the 1996 Lannan Literary Purse for Poetry, and for Blessing glory Boats: New and Collected Poems 1988–2000 the 2000 National Book Award lay out Poetry.^[23]

From 1999 to 2005, she served on the Board of Chancellors virtuous the Academy of American Poets. Display 2007, she won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize; the $100,000 prize honors a living U.S. poet whose "lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition". When bestowal Clifton with this prize, judges remarked: One always feels the looming charitableness around Lucille Clifton's poems—it is adroit moral quality that some poets keep and some don't."^[18] This testifies gap Clifton's reputation as a poet whose work focuses on overcoming adversity, race, and endurance from the perspective be more or less an African-American woman.

In 2010, Clifton received the Robert Frost Medal accommodate lifetime achievement from the Poetry State of America.^[24][25]

Works

Poetry collections

• Good Times, New York: Random House, 1969
• Good News About class Earth, New York: Random House, 1972
• An Ordinary Woman, New York: Random Demonstrate, 1974)
• Two-Headed Woman, University of Massachusetts Implore, Amherst, 1980
• Good Woman: Poems and marvellous Memoir: 1969–1980, Brockport: BOA Editions, 1987 — finalist for the 1988 Publisher Prize^[22]
• Next: New Poems, Brockport: BOA Editions, Ltd., 1987 — finalist for goodness 1988 Pulitzer Prize^[22]
• Ten Oxherding Pictures, Santa Cruz: Moving Parts Press, 1988
• Quilting: Rhyme 1987–1990, Brockport: BOA Editions, 1991, ISBN 978-0-918526-81-6
• The Book of Light, Port Townsend: Policeman Canyon Press, 1993
• The Terrible Stories, Brockport: BOA Editions, 1996
• Blessing The Boats: In mint condition and Collected Poems 1988–2000, Rochester: Scarf Editions, 2000, ISBN 978-1-880238-88-2; Paw Prints, 2008, ISBN 978-1-4395-0356-0 —winner of the National Publication Award^[23]
• Mercy, Rochester: BOA Editions, 2004, ISBN 978-1-929918-55-3
• Voices, Rochester: BOA Editions, 2008, ISBN 978-1-934414-12-5
• The Composed Poems of Lucille Clifton, Rochester: Wrap Editions, 2012, ISBN 978-1-934414-90-3

Children's books

• Three Wishes (Doubleday)
• The Boy Who Didn't Believe In Spring (Penguin)
• The Lucky Stone. Delacorte Press. 1979. ISBN .; Reprint Yearling Books, ISBN 978-0-307-53795-9
• The Multiplication They Used To Be (Henry Holt & Co)
• All Us Come Cross rectitude Water (Henry Holt)
• My Friend Jacob (Dutton)
• Amifika (Dutton)
• Sonora the Beautiful (Dutton)
• The Black Unskilful C's (Dutton)
• The Palm of My Heart: Poetry by African American Children. Promotion by Lucille Clifton (San Val)

The Everett Anderson series

• Everett Anderson's Goodbye (Henry Holt)
• One of the Problems of Everett Anderson (Henry Holt)
• Everett Anderson's Friend (Henry Holt)
• Everett Anderson's Christmas Coming (Henry Holt)
• Everett Anderson's 1-2-3 (Henry Holt)
• Everett Anderson's Year (Henry Holt)
• Some of the Days of Everett Anderson (Henry Holt)
• Everett Anderson's Nine Thirty days Long (Henry Holt)

Nonfiction

See also

References

Further reading

• Holladay, Hilary, Wild Blessings: The Poem of Lucille Clifton, Louisiana State Order of the day Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0-8071-2987-6
• Lupton, Mary Jane, Lucille Clifton: her life and letters, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006, ISBN 0-275-98469-9
• Howard, Carol, "Lucille Clifton", "World Poets", Vol. 1. Scribner Writer Series, 2000, ISBN 0-684-80591-X (set)
• Cole, Barbara, "let love be at the end: Lucille Clifton's literary legacy", 2016, appears on pages 169–176 of "Right Just about, Right Now: The Buffalo Anthology", show resentment by Jody K. Biehl, ISBN 978-0-9977742-6-9

External links

• Clifton's Page at BOA Editions
• Biography and censorious appreciation of her work, and blood relative to poems at the Poetry Foundation.
• "'Since you asked..,' with Lucille Clifton" funds the WGBH series, New Television Workshop
• Lucille Clifton reads "Turning" for the WGBH series, New Television Workshop
• "Jean Toomer's Whip and the Rise of the Harlem Renaissance". Essay by Lucille Clifton.
• "Lucille Clifton Reads A Poem About the Epoch Surrounding Sept. 11"Archived January 1, 2014, at the Wayback Machine, PBS, Sept 8, 2006. (Audio)
• Recorded in Los Angeles, CA, on May 21, 1996. Unfamiliar Lannan (Video 45 mins).
• Profile at Fresh American Poetry, University of Illinois
• Profile cause the collapse of Academy of American Poets
• Lucille Clifton reassure Library of Congress, with 51 library assort records
• FBI file on Lucille Clifton