The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010

"The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010"may be the most important book of poetry to appear inyears."--"Publishers Weekly""All poetry readers will wantto own this book; almost everything is in it."--"PublishersWeekly""If you only read one poetry book in 2012, "The CollectedPoems of Lucille Clifton" ought to be it."—NPR "The 'CollectedClifton' is a gift, not just for her fans...but for all of us."--"TheWashington Post""The love readers feel for Lucille Clifton--both thewoman and her poetry--is constant and deeply felt. The lines that surface mostfrequently in praise of her work and her person are moving declarations ofracial pride, courage, steadfastness."--Toni Morrison, from the Foreword "TheCollected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010" combines all eleven ofLucille Clifton's published collections with more than fifty previouslyunpublished poems. The unpublished poems feature early poems from 1965-1969, acollection-in-progress titled "the book of days" (2008), and apoignant selection of final poems. An insightful foreword by NobelPrize-winning author Toni Morrison and comprehensive afterword by noted poetKevin Young frames Clifton's lifetime body of work, providing the definitivestatement about this major America poet's career. On February 13, 2010, thepoetry world lost one of its most distinguished members with the passing ofLucille Clifton. In the last year of her life, she was named the first AfricanAmerican woman to receive the $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize honouring a USpoet whose "lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinaryrecognition," and was posthumously awarded the Robert Frost Medal forlifetime achievement from the Poetry Society of America. "mother-tongue:to man-kind" (from the unpublished "the book of days"):"all that I am asking is that you see me as something more than a commonoccurrence, more than a woman in her ordinary skin." Nominee for the 2013Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for poetry.