Shaking
the maple pollen and cottonwood seeds out of our hair it is apparent that we are not yet
done with the Earth, trees, and the puny human creatures who live with
them. Lucille Clifton, the gifted late
writer and former Poet Laureate of
Maryland from 1979 to 1985 gave it serious consideration.
Clifton
was born in Depew, New York on June
27, 1936. Her first book of poems, Good
Times was rated one of the best
books of the year in 1969 by the New York Times.
She
was employed in state and federal government positions until
1971, when she became a writer in
residence at Coppin State College
in Baltimore where she completed two
more collections—Good
News About the Earth in 1972 and An Ordinary Woman in 1974; Her other collections include Two-Headed
Woman 1980 which was a Pulitzer
Prize nominee as well as the recipient of the University of Massachusetts Press Juniper Prize; Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980
in 1987 which was nominated for the Pulitzer
Prize; and Blessing the Boats: New
and Selected Poems 1988–2000 which won the National Book Award.
Clifton was also the author of Generations:
A Memoir in 1976 and more than sixteen books for children, written expressly for an African-American audience.
Her
honors include an Emmy, a Lannan Literary Award, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Shelley Memorial Award, the YM-YWHA Poetry Center Discovery Award,
and the 2007 Ruth Lilly Prize.
In
1999, she was elected a Chancellor
of the Academy of American Poets.
and was Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
After
a long battle with cancer, Lucille Clifton died on February 13, 2010, at the age of seventy-three.
generations
people who are
going to be
in a few years
bottoms of trees
bear a
responsibility to something
besides people
if it was only
you and me
sharing the
consequences
it would be
different
it wouId be just
generations of
men
but
this business of
war
these war kinds
of things
are erasing
those natural
obedient
generations
who ignored
pride
stood on no hind legs
begged no water
stole no bread
did their own
things
and the
generations of rice
of coal
of grasshoppers
by their
invisibility
denounce us
--Lucille
Clifton
from How to Carry Water: Selected Poems. Copyright © 1969,
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