Some of us are very, very fortunate: we are priviliged to at least once in our lifetime meet a woman who is so powerful, so full of love and giving, that she changes the course of our lives, and always for the better. I have been many times blessed in having met a number of such women. The first was Lucille Clifton.

She was my Senior Thesis Advisor during the short time she was at the University of California - Santa Cruz and she gave me the gift of trusting my woman's voice as a writer. She taught me that writer's are "Ordinary Women" indeed, which meant I could join that elite if I so chose, and that as "Ordinary Women" we have powerful things to say about the world we live in. She taught me writers are not Goddesses that look down upon mere mortals such as myself, yet rather are warm, loving, caring women willing and eager to share their knowledge of the craft of writing. At least Lucille Clifton is.

There is nothing, really, that I can say about Lucille Clifton that her poetry cannot say better. I am including on the following pages the poems from good woman: poems and a memoir 1969-1980 which affected me most profoundly, with brief comments regarding my response to them. Understand, please, these are only my interpretations of her poems; it may not be at all what she intended or what you perceive of them, but then, that is one of the magic wonders of poetry: we see each poem in our individual, unique way. I simply hope you are struck with the beauty and power of Lucille Clifton's poems as I have been.

Lucille Clifton is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary's College of Maryland and the author of the terrible stories (BOA Editions, Ltd.), The Book of Light (Copper Canyon), Quilting: Poems: 1987-1990 (BOA Editions, Ltd.), Next: New Poems (BOA Editions, Ltd.), and Good Woman: Poems and A Memoir 1969-1980 (BOA Editions, Ltd.).

Lucille Clifton (née Sayles) was born and raised in Buffalo New York, and attended the State University of New York. She is a former Poet Laureate of Maryland and has received a Creative Writing Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1970 and 1973, and a grant from The American Academy of Poets. She has received the Shelley Memorial Prize, the Charity Randall prize, the Shestack Prize from the American Poetry Review, and an Emmy Award. In 1988, she became the first author to have two books of poetry chosen as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize (Good Woman and Next). She is the author of numerous children's books and books of poetry, including The Book of Light, Next, terrible stories, Two Headed Woman and Good News About the Earth. She has been the Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary's College of Maryland from 1991 to the present, and lives in Columbia Maryland and has raised six children.

Lucille Clifton is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary's College of Maryland. She is the only author to have two books of poetry chosen as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in one year: Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980 and Next: New Poems, both published by BOA in 1988. Her other books include Quilting, Poems 1987-1990 and The Book of Light. She lives in Columbia, Maryland.

Poems of myth, of the body, family sagas, the South, and God -- "terrible" in that they are awe-inspired and told by a unique, daring, and gifted voice.

Lucille Clifton always conjures a brave poetry. She has woven into The Terrible Stories the fabular and the biblical, and these compressed narratives grow and expand into an emotional composite that challenges what is human in us. We trust her compassion -- mainly because her poems refuse to assume a moral high ground that excludes ordinary lives and dreams. Clifton's poems are democratic and lyrical gems.

Lucille Clifton is one of the most distinguished American poets writing today. In The Terrible Stories, her tenth collection of verse, Clifton covers new terrain-cancer and mastectomy, the life of King David, encounters with a vixen fox who is both shaman and muse. Brilliantly honed language, stunning images and sharp rhythms address the whole of human experience: birth, death, children, family, sexuality and spirituality, and community in antebellum and contemporary American culture. Hers is a poetry passionate and wise, ranging from the personal to the biblical to the mythical, not afraid to rage or whisper.

Lucille Clifton was born in Depew, New York, in 1936. Her nine books of poetry include The Terrible Stories (BOA Editions, 1995), which was nominated for the National Book Award; The Book of Light (1993); Quilting: Poems 1987-1990 (1991); Next: New Poems (1987); Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980 (1987), which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; Two-Headed Woman(1980), also a Pulitzer Prize nominee and winner of the University of Massachusetts Press Juniper Prize; An Ordinary Woman (1974); Good News About the Earth (1972); and Good Times (1969). She has also written Generations: A Memoir (1976) and more than sixteen books for children. Her honors include an Emmy Award from the American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, a Lannan Literary Award, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Shelley Memorial Award, and the YM-YWHA Poetry Center Discovery Award. She has served as Poet Laureate for the State of Maryland and is currently Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary's College of Maryland.

I've included these brief biographies so you may get a sense of Lucille Clifton's place in American poetry, or at least as she is viewed by reviewers and biographers. But to really know Lucille Clifton, you would do best to read her poetry. On the following two pages I've included exerpts from good woman: poems and a memoir 1969-1980 and Next: New Poems. The fourth page is a listing of all her books and links to Amazon.com if you would like to read more of Lucille Clifton. And now, go to page two and treat yourself to the poetry of one of the best women poet's in America.

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